So a friend of mine needed a water pump replaced on this 2002 Pontiac Grand Am. Being the ever-willing car guy of the neighborhood (and the foolish guy of the neighborhood) I offered to replace the pump for him. I looked up the instructions online and, to my amazement, it didn't look too bad. He also wanted his upper and lower radiator hoses replaced, coolant flushed, and drive belt replaced. Certainly stuff I've done before, but not on this car.
I went to the parts store, got the pump hoses, belt, new clamps, Zerex Dex-Cool, and some other misc stuff for the job. Taking off the pump turned out to be the easiest water pump I've ever done. It was a snap! The drive belt however... um... yeah... not so much. To the wonderful, helpful, brilliant engineer at GM who decided this was a good idea... why on Earth did you believe that in order to take the drive belt off, you should, oh... I donno... TAKE OFF THE MOTOR MOUNT. Oh, and because of the "V" shape of the body around the engine bay, if you use a wrench on the belt tensioner and it retracts to the untensioned position, you can't remove the wrench. There isn't enough room between the engine and the body to pull the wrench off the tensioner. Because you can't remove the wrench you can't slip the belt around it to complete the belt install. So you have to move it to the tensioned position, which is kinda hard when you just used a regular ratchet and you have about an inch and a half to work with. Sigh.
Now the hoses, to replace the upper radiator hose I had to remove the "ram air" intake system, the battery and battery tray. Oh, and the clip to remove the lower hose? Yeah, you can't access it. It's wedged between the body and the hose. there isn't enough room to get a pair of pliers in there. It's literally in the most inconvenient orientation imaginable. Had to cut it off.
Then refilling the system with coolant... sigh. What a pain! No heat for like half an hour. From reading online that's not unusual. After about 30-45 minutes of running and revving the engine a few times, magically heat is restored, the system burps and all it well again.
This took forever. Thank you, end of rant. Good day. My back hurts.
I went to the parts store, got the pump hoses, belt, new clamps, Zerex Dex-Cool, and some other misc stuff for the job. Taking off the pump turned out to be the easiest water pump I've ever done. It was a snap! The drive belt however... um... yeah... not so much. To the wonderful, helpful, brilliant engineer at GM who decided this was a good idea... why on Earth did you believe that in order to take the drive belt off, you should, oh... I donno... TAKE OFF THE MOTOR MOUNT. Oh, and because of the "V" shape of the body around the engine bay, if you use a wrench on the belt tensioner and it retracts to the untensioned position, you can't remove the wrench. There isn't enough room between the engine and the body to pull the wrench off the tensioner. Because you can't remove the wrench you can't slip the belt around it to complete the belt install. So you have to move it to the tensioned position, which is kinda hard when you just used a regular ratchet and you have about an inch and a half to work with. Sigh.
Now the hoses, to replace the upper radiator hose I had to remove the "ram air" intake system, the battery and battery tray. Oh, and the clip to remove the lower hose? Yeah, you can't access it. It's wedged between the body and the hose. there isn't enough room to get a pair of pliers in there. It's literally in the most inconvenient orientation imaginable. Had to cut it off.
Then refilling the system with coolant... sigh. What a pain! No heat for like half an hour. From reading online that's not unusual. After about 30-45 minutes of running and revving the engine a few times, magically heat is restored, the system burps and all it well again.
This took forever. Thank you, end of rant. Good day. My back hurts.
