Water pump #2: One was recalled, and now the gas engine one is leaking!

How do you know that its not the one they recently fixed in the recall and they are trying to cover up for a botched install? I would ask them to show me. Point out the one they installed and where the new leak is. Sorry, I'm always suspicious dealership service.

 

They are indeed separate pumps,the HV Pump was the one that was replaced in the "recall" and it's not unreasonable to expect that your Engine Water Pump needs replacing with the mileage on your vehicle,
If you open the hood and look down the left side of your engine,you'll see the Serpentine belt which is attached to the water pump by a pulley,there is a weep hole on those pumps so you should see a pink coloured residue on the pump and that would be a definite indication that it indeed needs to be replaced.

 

132,000 miles is a reasonable service life on the engine water pump. The two water pumps are completely unrelated. $450 is a little overpriced, but $300 is probably about the best you will find. What is a problem for a basic shop, though, is that to do a complete coolant drain and fill, it requires either a scan tool or a non-standard procedure to fill the coolant heat storage tank ("the thermos"). So you need either a Toyota or a hybrid specialist to do the job.

There's a hybrid shop near you in Melbourne, and we have 1 positive feedback so far. Try them?

Mellor's Automotive Inc. 1410 W. Newhaven Ave. West Melborne, FL 32904 (321) 956-1997. Contact: Joshua J. Mellor [email protected]

 

Wow, I see that this has happened to many others but it looks as if our day went similar today!

Dropped our 05' off for recall work on the accelerator and the HV water pump as you had done in November. Got the call that my ICE water pump is bad as well. $316 to replace. Also needed new serpentine belt $76. I got this down knowing they needed no labor if I had them do the water pump. $78 both air filters, $18 taillight bulb, $16 indicator bulb. I gave them the go ahead on the water pump, belt, oil change and transaxle fluid change. Will take care of filters and bulbs myself. I almost opted to do the water pump myself and certainly could have with the resources on here. The still cold weather and what seemed like a fair price I elected not to.

I would strongly recommend having them swap that belt out, should only be around $20. Maybe thats already in your $450 quote as it is common practice to change them once they are removed.

Good luck!

 

Drew, how many miles on your Prius? And how much did they charge for the trans fluid change?

$316 is one of the better quotes for the water pump.

 

Mileage was 83300 at time of diagnosis.

I also thought $316 was a decent quote from what I seen others were reporting. One reason I just let them do it.

Trans fluid was $110. Which seemed ok at best. Between the two I was ok with it though.

 

The water pump itself is pretty straight-forward. If you have worked on cars before, I would strongly encourage you to do this job. The biggest hassle is holding the pulley while unbolting it. Having a pulley holding tool helps. Save on OTC Tools 6613 at ToolTopia.com

The coolant is the real issue. Best practice is to drain the thermos, especially if your car has never had the coolant serviced at 132,000 miles. But there are only 2 or 3 scan tool systems in the world that will work to refill it. That means either using a non-standard procedure such as Patrick's http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...shooting/30813-changing-engine-coolant-5.html, or skipping the thermos drain/fill all together.

Finally, before doing anything, make sure that you actually have a leak. Engine water pump seems to be the most common unnecessary repair recommended at dealerships during the inverter pump recall. At 132,000 miles, a leak is plausible, but many Prii out there have 2-3 times that mileage on their original pumps.

 

The inverter/transaxle has a separate cooling loop. According to the IC pump recall, the technician is supposed to drain that, but in many places they are clamping the hoses so as to avoid having to bleed the system.

The going rate for a coolant exchange is in the low $100-$150 range

 

If you loosen the water pump pulley bolts prior to removing the serpentine drive belt, then you might avoid the need to use a screwdriver (or special tool) to hold the pulley in place.

If you wish to reuse the engine coolant (say for example, if the odometer reading is substantially below 100K miles), then you could attach a hose to the radiator drain cock and drain the coolant into a clean container for reuse.

Did the cabin heater produce the normal amount of heated air? Do you hear any air bubbles in the heater core?

If you are running the AC compressor, that would not reduce the gasoline engine operating temperature. If you are running the cabin heater, that might reduce gasoline engine operating temperature.

A scan tool will not help this procedure. Access to the Toyota diagnostic laptop would help to run the coolant heat recovery pump, but I have posted a workaround to that.

No engine ECU DTC will be logged if you left air in the engine coolant loop. Hence it is important to be sure that there is no air in the system. One way to determine that is to verify that the cabin heater is working properly and that you don't hear air bubbling around. Also when the engine cools down, make sure that the radiator and expansion tank are both full. Keep an eye on that as you continue to drive the car, and continue to fill both until the level no longer drops when the engine is cold.

 

The redesign was across 4 cylinder engines. My RAV4 that I did a few months ago also had this feature of a differently appearing weep hole. I do wonder if 2 fas 4 u has the redesigned pump on his 2009 with 325,000+ miles and no problems.

 

I was thinking about this, and I do wonder if you have an airlock. After 40 minutes of running, hot coolant should be circulating through the radiator.

Also, how did the old pump look? Pink crusty nastiness at the weep hole?

 

Not necessarily, until a really hot day. Are you getting proper cabin heat? Do you hear gurgling inside the vehicle?

 

Dried Super Long Life Coolant!

As Patrick and Joe have mentioned, running the heater on full blast, max hot, will potentially provide an indication of an airlock.