e36 Waterleak and wobbly pulley - what's this?

[Xenocide]

A friend of mine's car lost all it's fluid the other day. I looked at it and there was waker leaking from the thermostat housing, so i replaced that, it dried out whist i was waiting for the part to come. It's still leaky though; very leaky. You can see it dribbling off the bottom of the engine when the fan shroud is out the way.

So it looked like it's leaking from under the pulley with the fan coupling on it - Is this the waterpump?

How hard is it to replace? I can see some bolts but I'm guessing it's actually quite deep and a belt change would be needed at the same time? Also how do you take the bloody fan off?

Videos of the car running (if you can call it that) and me wobbling the pully. Sorry for the crappy vids but it was dark

Running: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdp4LZAx8C8
Wobbling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQPpqlfmjZY

Cheers

[bababa]

Hiya,

Yep, the water pump is right behind that pulley. It's not too bad a job to replace - I did mine last weekend

Basically, remove the viscous fan from the end of the waterpump (left hand thread) and lift it out, along with the shroud. Then remove the pulley from the waterpump by removing the four bolts. Then remove the four nuts from the studs which hold the waterpump into the block.

The waterpump can now be retrieved from the block. If it's particularly stubborn, it can be "jacked out" by means of the threaded holes (M6?) in either side - insert a bold into each and tighten them alternately until the water pump drops out of the block. It might be an idea to put a sheet of cardboard on the back of the radiator during this process to ensure no damage is done to the radiator if the waterpump suddenly pulls out

You'll probably find a load of coolant pours out at this point - make sure you've removed the belt(s) from the front of the engine prior to this, to avoid them becoming contaminated with coolant.

Reassembly is pretty much the reverse of the disassembly. When I reassembled mine, I chose to replace the plastic pulley with a new one because the old one looked rather brittle.

[Xenocide]

Fantastic answer. Thankyou very much! How long did it take you out of interest?

Oh and how do you undo the fan coupling? How do you stop the pulley spinning? The belt's knackered too so doesn't grip (and it's coated in coolant )

[bababa]

Just realised, my car is a 6 cylinder and in the video you mention your friend's is a 318i four cylinder so it's possibly an entirely different procedure. Hopefully somebody else will be able to steer you in the right direction ;-)

[bababa]

In my case, it took two or three hours, but I was replacing the radiator at the same time as well as taking regular tea breaks.

To remove the viscous fan, I had a friend wedge a long thin screwdriver between two of the bolts on the waterpump pulley as I turned the large nut on the viscous fan clockwise with a large adjustable spanner. Some people find this very stubborn and have to jar the spanner with a hammer or other blunt object - I think I must have been lucky with mine!!

[Xenocide]

Sweet cheers bababa. I'll update when i've fitted a new pump then. Doesn't look like it should be too tricky