Mazda 3 2.0L skyactiv. I have the pump on hand already along with gaskets, coolant, and the belt. Local guy (who I trust) quoted a rough estimate of $200-ish.
Water pump seems pretty straight forward to me, remove, replace, refill but maybe there's some gotcha's with modern engines.
Should I take a stab at doing my water pump?
- Thread starter jayjr1105
- Start date
Ok, here we go. Make sure you have a good scraper. Buy some chemical gasket remover but wear goggles and rubber gloves. The FBI hates this stuff because it will remove your fingerprints ( from your fingers). Ask how I know. Do some research to see if you need to use thread sealant.
Have a pan ready underneath the car. The biggest thing is, you have to remove all of the old gasket from the block. If they used gasket sealant it might take hours. Have lots of beer on hand.
A small torque wrench is nice but not totally required. Lots of ways to deal with gaskets. I'll let the others chime in on their favourite techniques.
I highly recommend watching a you tube video of your model of car. Also see if you can find a torque sequence and torque value. One other tip is to use a half inch ratchet, not a girly-man 3/8. You might have to give it some tough love when disassembling every thing. I recommend taking photos of everything. It's discouraging to find a spare nut after you have it buttonedy up. And worse, it dribbles coolant because you didn't clean the block. Good luck.
Did I mention cleaning the block?
Last edited:
Mental note taken after reading snaggle's post lol..(pay to have it swapped out)
I highly recommend purchasing plastic razor blades to help get the old gasket off. Gouged the pump housing on a car once with a standard razor blade and couldn't get the gasket to seal properly so i ended up having to take it all back apart to add a dab of liquid gasket. Lesson learned. Not sure how hard it would be on a skyactive motor, but my old Mazda FS is relatively straightforward. Depending on the time of the year and the weather, I would pay 200 to have someone else do it. Last time I did it, it was snowing. For 200 I would have paid someone else to suffer in single digit weather and 2 days worth of snow.
I looked at a video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q54MaHhC7HA and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI-7Drztonc
If your car is like that, you got it easy. You don't have to worry about removing the top motor mount and jacking the engine up/down because of close clearance to the side making pump removal impossible otherwise. I'd say go for it.
Last edited:
And if you end up goofing something up real bad the cost could way exceed the 200 figure. Just break the wrong bolt off and the engine may possibly need to be removed.
Makes 200 sound real good. I'm not familiar with that engine but if it is like some where the timing belt drives the pump, and you get that wrong then you'd be looking
at a total engine replacement.
Originally Posted by Snagglefoot
Ok, here we go. Make sure you have a good scraper. Buy some chemical gasket remover but wear goggles and rubber gloves. The FBI hates this stuff because it will remove your fingerprints ( from your fingers). Ask how I know. Do some research to see if you need to use thread sealant.
Have a pan ready underneath the car. The biggest thing is, you have to remove all of the old gasket from the block. If they used gasket sealant it might take hours. Have lots of beer on hand.
A small torque wrench is nice but not totally required. Lots of ways to deal with gaskets. I'll let the others chime in on their favourite techniques.
I highly recommend watching a you tube video of your model of car. Also see if you can find a torque sequence and torque value. One other tip is to use a half inch ratchet, not a girly-man 3/8. You might have to give it some tough love when disassembling every thing. I recommend taking photos of everything. It's discouraging to find a spare nut after you have it buttonedy up. And worse, it dribbles coolant because you didn't clean the block. Good luck.
Did I mention cleaning the block?
actually that looks like a pretty simple replacement. if the water pump was driven by the timing chain it would be internal underneath the timing cover and would cost a lot more then 200 dollars to replace.
looks like there is no gasket so cleaning up the surfaces should be minimal and could done with a piece of sand paper and just make sure the groove where the o-ring goes is clean and lube the o-ring before you put the pump back on either with some coolant or a smidge of di-lectric grease.
the hardest part looks like taking off the top idler pulley mount assembly and taking off the pulley from the water pump itself.
I think its doable.
Give it a try you will do it and do it well if you want to and have to determination.
Read up on it, ask questions, watch videos and go for it! That's how you learn. One suggestion, if after all that you determine you can't do the job, pay a pro.
Youtube is your friend.
Originally Posted by Char Baby
Youtube is your friend.
Really very easy to do on that car. Not that much more difficult than an oil change.
YouTube it. Before I did the timing belt and water pump on my Jetta I watched dozens of videos dozens of times. I literally could have done it with my eyes closed. Ironically 100k miles later it's time to do the timing belt and water pump again. Timing kit arrived the other day, just waiting for space in my BIL garage.
Originally Posted by Snagglefoot
Ok, here we go. Make sure you have a good scraper. Buy some chemical gasket remover but wear goggles and rubber gloves. The FBI hates this stuff because it will remove your fingerprints ( from your fingers). Ask how I know. Do some research to see if you need to use thread sealant.
Have a pan ready underneath the car. The biggest thing is, you have to remove all of the old gasket from the block. If they used gasket sealant it might take hours. Have lots of beer on hand.
A small torque wrench is nice but not totally required. Lots of ways to deal with gaskets. I'll let the others chime in on their favourite techniques.
I highly recommend watching a you tube video of your model of car. Also see if you can find a torque sequence and torque value. One other tip is to use a half inch ratchet, not a girly-man 3/8. You might have to give it some tough love when disassembling every thing. I recommend taking photos of everything. It's discouraging to find a spare nut after you have it buttonedy up. And worse, it dribbles coolant because you didn't clean the block. Good luck.
Did I mention cleaning the block?
They quoted you $200? That means it can't be much more than 1 hour labor. Especially since you won't have to deal with removing and applying sealant, DIY.
Similar threads
- Question
