Water Pump at 156k miles

Drive with a ScanGuage. It can monitor many useful functions, 4 at a time, including water temperature. Phone apps can do the same, if that's you preference.

 

I did a preventative maintenance item on the water pump at 175 k miles on our 2010. My thought behind it was that at that time, it was in service for over8 years and had a fair bit of mileage .

When pulled there was notable resistance to spin when compared to the new Aisin one that went in. I have helped with 2 other water pump replacements, and this finding is consistent. There have been some that have had their water pump fail (@Joele3 comes to mind) and then had the head gasket to deal with .

So it was worth the piece of mind for me.

Hope that helps .

 

You get the dash light that tells you it’s too late.

After talking to Joele (he lives close by to me), he convinced me that the preventive pump replacement was wise.

So I didn’t think twice .

 

I would think it's mostly miles, not months? You know why I'm asking, lol.

 

It could be, but your pump is now also 10 years old too.

Where I work we do a lot of preventative maintenance based on service interval and not “run to failure”.

Some of the things we PM, are not close to failing, so we extend the interval based on data. But the 3 pumps I’ve seem come out of service on Prii that were 7-9 years old and had 140k plus miles, I wouldn’t extend the interval .

I’d like to see a low mileage garage queen swap though for a data point.

 

It’s not just toyota that doesn’t have a temp gauge (or I would find it hard to believe they are the only one).

If you think of it this way it might make sense: they design cars that meet a service life(here wisdom is that to be 180k miles). So how many failures have we seen before this interval? Not many.

If you want to take your Prius past the design threshold, it’ll take some work, but is cheaper than the alternative of buying another car.

 

If the electric pump fails without warning within reasonable life of the car, it is a huge leap backwards from a conventional belt driven pump.

 

Conventional pumps are not susceptible to those failure modes, unless the impeller or pulley comes loose. The fuel savings allowed by the electric pump would take centuries to compensate for high risk of cooking the engine.

 

So do we get a decent warning if we monitor OBD data? Hopefully pump RPM or duty cycle or something like that many miles before coolant temp starts trending high? (Seems like we already need to monitor for an overheat from other causes -- the dash lights aren't saving anyone from blowing head gaskets.)

 

You will get the warning light, which will illuminate before engine damage. Even with a temperature gauge, most drivers figure out they are overheating when they get the accompanying warning light.

 

Many new cars do not. Among several - 2010 and later Outback, 2009 Honda Fit, etc. Soon the temperature indicator will go the way of the old voltage gauge.

 

That’s a funny comment because I monitor both system voltage and coolant temperature as 2 of the 4 fields on our Scanhguage II, which is mounted just in front of the steering wheel.
But what about an ammeter gauge, huh? At least one of my earliest cars (52 Packard?) had one, and it was necessary as that car had a DC generator that barely supplied enough amps at higher rpms, so at idle the amp gauge would actually show a slight discharge. Since the Generator commutator brushes were always wearing down, you had to use that amp gauge to detect the lack of charging at higher rpms and then change out the brushes. They don’t make them like they used to! (Thank dog.)

 

Don't forget vacuum gages - the early fuel economy indicators.