metal water pump failures ? rare or not?

limbo118118

limbo118118

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Hi all... got bit of a weird senerio going on with the s3...

Basically car was fine etc etc...

Then i fitted new alloy radiator aswel with a new thermostat and new coolant temp sender an new fan switch... all from euros apart from rad.

An now im not sure wether i have a weird airlock in the system or my water pumps on the way out? (Metal impeller - new 1 year ago)

Whats happening is... temp sits around 90° on liquid gauge normal cruising... heaters blow hot....but after i give it some! Even just abit sometimes the temp will shoot up! Talking 100+ then i turn fans on (on manual switch currently) an heaters... an it drops quickly...

i have noticed the little hose ontop of coolant bottle which feeds water back only slowly comes out - should this be a fast flow out of this hose?

Bottom rad hose gets hot - thermostat works fine...

I have tryed squeezing pipes - heaters on full hot - cap off - pulled a pipe off going to heaters to bleed.

Stuck for ideas now... any ideas???? :(
 
Does the gauge move beyond 90 on the dash?

Or is this ACTUAL temperature through heater controls or another gauge?

The only failures you get with metal pumps to my knowledge is leakage through the shaft. This won't affect temperature.
 
So I have this clear in my head... the fans are manually switched?... and during the period of time the temps rise to 100+ they are not on until you switch them on?

<tuffty/>
 
Gauge in car will rise that works. But iv normaly hit fans an cooling it before then as im using my liquid gauge which is acuarate.

Fans are on manual switch as they dont work by them self's which is another strange issue iv got :(

once i see it go 95+ i will turn them on either way it shouldnt be rising like this surely,

sure i seen prawn say with this rad he sees high 90s on a 20min track session...
 
I've had a FIA metal water pump fail on me before (on a 2.0 tdi) within only 15 miles of fitting and symptoms were much like this. . . Could leave the car idling for as long as you like and it was fine, driving around normally mainly off boost and again, temps absolutely fine. But as soon as you started boosting it about a bit temp gauge would shoot up.

When we removed the pump the impeller was just loose on the spindle, so it was still rotating just about enough to keep some water flowing. However it wasn't able to keep up with higher demand.
 
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Run fans all the time.... see if it still happens... if I turn off aircon temps rise quickly but fans will kick in at 96ish deg on slow... high speed kicks in if over 100ish

Big turbo cars get hot, 20v is not fantastic at cooling... you need to keep the temps in control especially on track...

Rewire if you have to so fans are on slow speed all the time (or fix the issue of course)

<tuffty/>
 
My eyes dont leave the liquid gauge.. been too paranoid about it. Luckily i dont use the car alot currently so no harms been done yet.

I just need to find the bottom of this.. does it sound like water pump to you? What does the hose ontop of the coolant bottle flow like normaly?

My issuee with the fans is strange too.. replaced fan switch / fan control module /checked fuses.. an they still dont come on by them self's :(
 
Last edited:
limbo118118 said:
My eyes dont leave the liquid gauge.. been too paranoid about it. Luckily i dont use the car alot currently so no harms been done yet.

I just need to find the bottom of this.. does it sound like water pump to you? What does the hose ontop of the coolant bottle flow like normaly?

My issuee with the fans is strange too.. replaced fan switch / fan control module /checked fuses.. an they still dont come on by them self's :(
Click to expand...

I had the same problem as you with the fans and it was the fuse plate on top of the battery. Don't know how I didn't notice it earlier. Take two seconds to have a look (I'm not talking about the green fuses btw rather the metal plate sitting on top of the battery).
 
I will double check them this weekend but i put my multi meter across it an it showed 12v. An my afterrun pump works fine which runs off the same ones i belive
 
Nah that's different. My run after pump worked fine. But the fans low speed didn't work. Only one would come on high.

The cause
4533cf693257eeb10b125a5585252b4f.jpg
 
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