Another water leak problem...

M

MatiasMandango

A2OC Donor
I have a water leak issue with my 2001 1.4tdi 75, it seems to have coincided with when I had a cambelt change. I was pretty peeved with the garage that did the work for other reasons (car jacked in the wrong place cracked side cills and bent bodywork behind on both sides, and the used a grinder to cut some rusted screws on the webasto outlet on the tray rather than drop the tray slightly and undo the retaining bolt - grinder made a mess of the under tray!!).........anyway I top up the water and probably within 3 weeks the light is back on, not a massive loss of coolant but top it up and same thing happens.

So my question is given they did a crap job of what I can see assuming they didn't replace the water pump, which I asked them to do, how would I check to see if it is the pump which is the problem - is there something visible to check or does it have to be replaced to see if its faulty?

I'm a bit worried having read through the posts on the forum and there's talk of possible head gasket failure, its on 158,000 miles now and near zero money to fix, I certainly don't want to have to get rid of the car I have become quite attached to the ol' girl!

Thanks

Matt
 
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I had a good inspection of the engine bay of the weekend to try to find the source of the leak. It is really difficult to see the hoses around the back of the engine, fair amount of oil around the back and the turbo but I suspect that is probably normal for an engine on this mileage?

Anyway I found what looked like it could be cooling fluid and not oil on the drivers side of the sump, tracking this upwards it stopped at the position of what I guess is called the bottom pulley (?), so I am wondering if this could lead up to the water pump.....does anyone have a diagram of this side of the engine assembly?

Also whilst looking I found my fan belt is covered in cracks and looks like it could break at any moment, which then lead me to loosen the cambelt cover to inspect the cambelt. The cambelt to me does not look one to 1 1/2 years old, its has done 20,000 miles but I would expect the outside face to still look black? instead it looks like the outer face of the fan belt, a tired worn brown. I am now wondering whether the garage didn't change my cambelt at all. Is anyone interested in giving me an opinion on this if I can upload some photo's?

Thanks
 
MatiasMandango said:
I had a good inspection of the engine bay of the weekend to try to find the source of the leak. It is really difficult to see the hoses around the back of the engine, fair amount of oil around the back and the turbo but I suspect that is probably normal for an engine on this mileage?

Anyway I found what looked like it could be cooling fluid and not oil on the drivers side of the sump, tracking this upwards it stopped at the position of what I guess is called the bottom pulley (?), so I am wondering if this could lead up to the water pump.....does anyone have a diagram of this side of the engine assembly?

Also whilst looking I found my fan belt is covered in cracks and looks like it could break at any moment, which then lead me to loosen the cambelt cover to inspect the cambelt. The cambelt to me does not look one to 1 1/2 years old, its has done 20,000 miles but I would expect the outside face to still look black? instead it looks like the outer face of the fan belt, a tired worn brown. I am now wondering whether the garage didn't change my cambelt at all. Is anyone interested in giving me an opinion on this if I can upload some photo's?

Thanks
Click to expand...

If you have been losing coolant in this area it will stain the outside of the cambelt, so the condition of the outside is not necessarly indicating if the belt was replaced or not.
However, when renewing a cambelt it is essential to renew the water pump too, perhaps they didn't and that might be the source of the leak?

Steve B
 
Thanks for the info Steve, maybe they have changed it, I don't know I wish I had a good look at the belts etc. when they actually did the work last July, although I wouldn't have known about the pump. I was really keen to do this work DIY with some help but it just seemed too complex a job even though the person that would have been helping me has a good knowledge of cars. Something just doesn't seem right to me looking at the state of the fanbelt and this possible pump leak.

Can anyone show me the location of the water pump on an engine assembly image or picture?

Thanks

Matt
 
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