On a recent timing belt replacement (my second on this car as routine maintenance), as always I did an inspection of all the timing components. I had replaced all tensioner, tensioner pulley, and idler pulley last time, and had a water pump on hand, but the water pump that was in ther felt like new. Smooth, no notchy-ness, and good bearing friction. This time, at 18,000 miles of use all felt fine EXCEPT the water pump. It felt really bad- lots of friction and a scraping noise. I removed it and found that the entire bearing and shaft assembly had shifted forward far enough to allow the vanes to rub against the pump's housing! It has worn a groove in the casting all along the outer edge of the vanes as if it had been run in a lathe. The groove was not terribly deep (like maybe 1mm or a but less) but I was sure glad that I use such a short maintenance interval on the timing belt! So, if you do this work yourself, have all those parts on hand, and when in doubt, replace them! __ __ Randy & \ \/ /alerie's \__/olvo '93 960 Estate
