| Oil from torn seal |
Having replaced the very same seal before, I wasn't at all intimidated this time around. Out came the seal puller and in one swift hand-motion, I lost my grip and whacked the back of my hand against the radiator. I was wearing my gloves, but they don't offer much protection for the back of the hand and it seems that's the most sensitive part. A little more fiddling and out came the seal.
| Torn seal |
Re-attaching the water pump
| New pump installed |
All back together, recycling the coolant
When I took things apart, I used a basin to catch the coolant fluid in hopes I could use it again and not have the hassle of taking it to the disposal center (c'mon, we don't put chemicals like this down the drain, that would be uncivil) whilst saving a few bucks. Before pouring the coolant back in the car, examination showed bits of dreck floating about, dreck I'd rather keep on the outside of the cooling system. My solution was to put a coffee Filter in the funnel and have that catch the chaff; however the filter was a bit too fine and I was a bit too impatient.
The filter was replaced by a paper towel, and in about 10 minutes, all of the captured coolant was back in the system. I was thinking that the ethylene glycol molecule's size was the cause of the poor flow through the filter, but I was wrong by a factor of 1000. Our friend C2H6O2 is about half a nanometer and a the average pore size of a coffee filter is about 50 microns, so the chemical should have passed through like a bee through an open window, or air through a residential screen, even if some of the molecules clung together in the filter's mesh. The slow speed was probably the filter doing it's job removing nasties from the fluid.
I thought I was being paranoid with the filter, but here's a picture of what remained in the pan after filtering. And, yes, the pan was clean before it caught the fluid. When pouring the liquid into the filter, I was careful not to disturb the sediments, as I didn't want the filter to break, or more likely, clog.
Job being done, I'm hoping that two's a charm when it comes to water pumps. It's been about 200 miles on the new pump with no problems, so I'm not worries about the torque of the impeller bolt, or at least I'm not worried that much.
Job being done, I'm hoping that two's a charm when it comes to water pumps. It's been about 200 miles on the new pump with no problems, so I'm not worries about the torque of the impeller bolt, or at least I'm not worried that much.
