Water Pumps and Sourcing

Usually you can put your hand on the main water pump ice engine water pump and feel that it's not running properly It's chunking out it'll spin a little bit then it'll stop abruptly spin a little bit stop abruptly if your hands on it you might be sensitive enough to register that I'm not sure what you'll see on the app or even in tech the Toyota software I've looked at it before but I don't remember if it'll show you that the pump is not a steady RPM continuously so if it's chunking out because the plastic is splitting off of the impeller cover it'll call for $2,200 RPMs but it'll only be running $850 and stopping for a second or something similar You can buy an impeller for like $30 that's not much to it it's a magnet with plastic over it and so on or you can buy a whole pump whatever makes you happy finding out if it's working or not it's yeah pretty quick You can tell by an app like torque that it is in fact called and should be spinning. Then you look at your water temperature to see if it's in range and if you are starting to overheat and your pump is on call then it must not be on call enough and it's time for you to take it off and look at it or at least put your hand on it while it's on call and see if you feel any spinning you can listen to it with a mechanic stethoscope whatever your fancy or you can just pull it off in about 18 minutes and have a look for yourself and stop all the hype. Some of this stuff all the tooling and time and diagnostics you're doing you could have just pulled the pump off and be holding it in your hand and have the cover off and looking at the split impeller.

 

Are you on your first or second head gasket?

 

I don't know what criteria is used to remove the TOYOTA logo casting from the pumps... but given the importance of the part and the track record of (at least some of) the ones that were ground blank, I will just pay for the real one from an online Toyota part dealer. It's usually cheaper than MSRP.

 

I'm not sure Toyota will sell you an impeller That's not how they do business The impeller is just a round device with a magnet on the back of it wrapped and shrouded in plastic It's mag drive so an impeller is not really a thing I mean it's not super mission critical production The factory ones that I'm taking out are the ones that are all peeled and shredded so I'm imagining some manufacture might have the wear with all to use some plastic that makes sense and we'll go a little more distance of course the opposite could happen too usually if you observe and look at the plastic of the product you're buying which you can't do till it gets to you You can maybe have a good idea of what's happening I've done both bought pumps and impellers no problems either way I'm not really a big fan of electric water pumps That's why another reason why I'm in the generation twos but oh well.

 

Idk if rock auto is safe from counterfeits or not, so unless someone can guarantee it, I’d stick with dealers

 

I bought an Aisin from a Japanese eBay seller. Looked legit. So far, so good.

 

Replacing just the impeller with a no name part makes no sense to me. The impeller is the single moving part and is also the part that fails. You want to go Temu-grade on that?

 

Don't waste your time or money with rock auto..... Lot's of fake cheap chinese copies,
and just crappy stuff. They were once a good place, but no longer.
If you're not going OEM, try autozone or similar, at least they are local and when/if the part fails,
you'll be able to get a replacement a lot faster and easier....

 

You're right the impeller basically is the only moving part It's like a mag drive pond pump basically the impellers of magnet wrapped with plastic I'm not sure you could go temu on that . But just about anything wrapped with the more modern polymer might be a good move and it just takes 20 minutes to put it on It's not like you're doing a 4-hour job here holy Christ so it's a $35 impeller stick it in there and it's working If you're scared of it you can monitor it with your software for a while till you get not so scared and that's that or it's I don't know what it is now for a pump 230 240 250 so I mean I'll take the $35 in the 45 minute option any day either one is 45 minutes swap out so I'll take the $35 anytime I have not seen an aftermarket impeller I'd have to hold it in my hand and see it but I'd still put it in and run it I would think some of the more modern plastics they're using today might have a chance of holding up better or it could be cheaper and hold up the same or a little less which is still most of you guys are changing these things it 150 plus thousand.

 

I used to buy a lot from rock auto.... but not anymore. In the last few years I've purchased
at 4 different times. Each time it was junk.
Last time with struts, front and back. As a package. One of the front's failed in a few hundred miles.
It took 2 weeks for me to get a replacement. Another 2 week AFTER they received it to refund the
money I had to pay to get the replacement.
The rear shocks were not even close, and didn't fit. They tried to blame it on me!
They came as a package!!! Another 2 weeks for replacements.... And 2 weeks for the refund.
So much for a lifetime warranty. After one replacement, they cancel you.

3-4000 miles later, both fronts failed. They wouldn't replace the one they already replaced stating
it was not going to resolve MY issue! So they blamed ME for it failing!
So I wanted a refund. No sense in replacing 1 strut!

And I couldn't get a person to talk me. Only emails. Another royal pain!
It took about a month to get a refund and they didn't want to refund the shipping.
I had to have someone I know go into their system to get my money back for that.

I went to autozone and got a set of front struts. So far so good.

 

It's junk. They're getting junk parts.
I won't waste my time or money with r/a. They're going cheap.
There is no customer service any longer...

 

You will sometimes get a
P148F engine coolant pump over revolution code and or you can watch the coolant temp in realtime to better understand how the cooling system reacts to load and ambient temperatures. The engine cooling system is quite effective in every normal situation; sometimes too good as it drops temps fast in engine off while using ac in Ready.

I set a lower limit of 210f on my coolant temp device (rather than the car's 248f) and have only seen it once after I accidentally left the reservoir cap slightly loose.



I am not a member of the change water pumps preemptively school. I prefer to change coolant often and average 30k-50k between drain and fills.

I also try to mitigate 149f inverter coolant temp alarms in high ambient traffic jams. Usually it means reducing ac run times and the obvious, staying out of the situation with alternate google maps routes.

 

P10 "heads up" display $35 for current versions like P12 on ebay. It seems the most popular version is now:
Car Digital Head Up Display OBD2+GPS HUD Gauge Speedometer Turbo RPM Alarm Temp | eBay

Runs from obd2, has many display and alarm options along with configurable sleep modes and communication busses so proper setup is required. Engine coolant typically 185f to 204f but sometimes drops 40f. Inverter coolant up to 149f before vehicle alarm, varies widely and quickly.