Why Do Toyota Water Pumps Leak? How to Prevent Them From Leaking?

hello and welcome to the carcarana channel and welcome to another ls460 one thing about toyota water pumps and leaks this is one of their weak points there are many many theories about water pumps and why they leak and some people say that toyotas don't make the best water pumps and they would be right this is one one thing with toyota that you're going to have a water pump leak over and over and over and some models go very long some of them don't it's just totally run them so in this video we're going to discuss a few things that i've seen from experience about water pumps and how toyota has been kind of improving their water pumps as we go and there's the coolant conversation and everything in between but to start this video this is an lexus ls460 now i have warned you about lexus ls460s that they can get expensive and if you buy a neglected one you're going to be in a world of trouble doing one thing after another one thing after another however this particular ls460 is a low mile example very well kept and taken care of by the owner i mean this thing only has 87 000 miles but it's here for a repair and you guessed it by the title of this video we're going to replace the water pump on this thing let's pull this thing on the rack let's start working on the water pump as we talk about why toyota water pumps leak and potentially what you can do to help that folks i absolutely love this thing because it's really well kept really clean it just is a beautiful thing and this thing was here for service i remember cleaning this engine bay but one thing uh i noticed right off the bat there's a cover missing here the reason for that is they have a battery tender here they don't drive this car a lot the owner of this car is an elderly gentleman very nice gentleman we've had a pleasure of having some chats with him as he stops by here they don't drive this car a lot they have another car as well so this basically sits in the garage babied heated garage and on the battery tender to keep things nice let's dig into this and let's start our conversation engine water pumps are very simply constructed you have one pulley that is usually driven by the belt and all toyota lexus engines it's always driven by a belt or a timer belt never buy a timing chain we do not have that in toyota land or lexus land then water pumps also have an impeller on the other side which is what circulates the coolant and runs it around in between them there is a bearing usually a rose very tiny roller bearing the old days there used to be bushings that is not the case anymore in the few in the current times there's also a seal that seals the coolant keeps it inside very very basic construction there's really nothing to it what happens with toyota water pumps coolants start slowly passing past the seal and initially you're going to have one drop and if you see one drop you see like a very tiny which is literally what looks like one dried up drop that is not a leak it's when you start seeing the trails is when things are actively leaking even though you don't see liquid coolant now that we got the covers off before we continue with this job i want to show you the leak and if you look right in this area you're going to see this pink crust you see all that pink crust right here you can even push it with your finger so that is coolant you remember toyota lexus coolant is pink as the coolant makes its way down the engine is very hot it's going to actually boil the water out of the coolant and what you're left with is this pink crust this is kind of by design you're going to see you see this you have a coolant leak now problem is you're not really going to see an active coolant puddle this big underneath the car until this leak is so massive that you have to top it off every single day you don't want it to get to that point because that's when it's going to catch you at a bad time you're driving you're never paying attention also in your air cooling car is overheating now we have bigger problems when you see trails like this start paying attention to the coolant level but when you see a trail that made it all the way down to the bottom this needs to be taken care of right away because if you just see a little bit of crusting underneath the water pump it's just starting that's when you want to start watching the coolant level but when you see it all the way down it's gotten bad enough where be kind of ahead of the leak don't be behind it and get caught by it be ahead of it replace it it's not the end of the world and move on while we're underneath this ls let's take a look at a few things first the tires they had some concerns with the tires the tires are actually not in bad shape they do have a little bit of feathering perhaps tire rotations would be a good idea for this car but they're not too bad they don't have a lot of dry rot or anything really let's look at the date on these tires and we have 46 17 is the number on this tire that means this is towards the end of 2017. so let's call it 2018. we're looking at four-year-old tires they're not too bad something else i noticed on this car is that's going to create a lot of rattling here these clamps that toyota loves to use on all their products and here we go the rest of it is coming off and install a new clamp they love to use these clamps they love to rot out and rust and just break and cause all kinds of rattles this is super common on the rx and the highlander for these to break and check the other one this one is gone too this one is completely fell out so usually get a big warm clamp just go around it and life is good put these to the side and look at the rest of this car which is in excellent shape now this is an illinois car so this is a rustling car that's why these clamps are gone and whatnot but the suspension is in excellent condition i mean i don't have any play here nothing everything is solid here the control arm bushings are good everything really is in great shape this does not have air suspension this just has regular suspension struts are good i don't see any leaks any issues nothing really here same thing on this side and folks i want to show you one thing this is a common scam if you would with uh with cars you see there's a little bit of grease coming out from this ball joint well this is not a problem folks you get a little bit of oil seeping out of the ball joint probably from the heat a little bit of oil got out leaked a little bit but the boot is intact majority of folks will look at this and go like oh you need ball joints this is gone this is all oily look look look and most people will fall for this don't maybe with other manufacturers toyota don't replace ball joints just because they have a little bit of wetness around them that is normal if it ain't broke don't fix it this is the theme with toyotas here is the ginormous cover that the ls has it actually has a metal cover and then a plastic one toward the front pretty cool design this has a lot of covers it's all cut pretty well covered up but we move on to the back same thing with the tires we have very light feathering nothing really extreme no leaks no issues i mean he did he did have a concern about the rear struts i don't see anything wrong with them they're not leaking their original struts perhaps just getting a little old but not an issue i don't see any leaks with them i don't i wouldn't recommend any repair here this carburetor doesn't need anything else other than our water pump here which we're taking care of already this is an excellent shaped car this is the kind ls if you really want an ls this is the lsu one no suspension problems no huge leak oil leaks everywhere and the interior is really in good shape i didn't show you the interior they have some personal items i don't want to i want to respect their privacy but the interior is very clean this has been taken care of this is he's not the original owner but he bought it with very low miles and he's really taken care of it and it shows the body is in great shape it's not very clean it's a black car it's really hard to keep it clean but the body is in great shape there's a few things in dents here here and there but nothing major this is in great shape the paint is in great shape here the car looks right i mean you can tell owners that take care of their cars by looking at their wheels especially with wheels like this with a with a kind of a lower profile tire you have no scrapes all over the place and that's usually how you know folks that really care about their cars and folks there not they don't care about their cars but they're not into cars this is someone who's into cars these wheels have no scrapes nothing look at this front one i mean the back one doesn't get as much but the front one usually nothing this is someone that cares about their car takes care of it and scrapes and things do happen but you take care of them that's how you keep this car clean and in good shape really the only thing i see on the body is a little scuff here that has a little dent in it but again this is underneath the bumper i'm not too worried about it and we probably if we heat this up a little bit and push on it it'll come right out but it's underneath the car you can't even see it from the top and this is not an issue but water pumps you see it leaking like this take care of it because you want to be ahead of the leak not behind it never get caught behind the leak that leaves you stranded somewhere because of a simple coolant leak haven't said that let's lower this car back down and let's get this water pump out and i'll show you the water pump we'll talk about it a little bit most toyota water pumps will have a gasket most of them and then modern ones are metal casket as you will see in this ls when we take it out we'll talk about it some of them will have a rubber gasket usually referred to as an oring but it is actually just a rubber gasket nothing really to it in my opinion the rubber gaskets are the best because they're very simple very easy to deal with no real prep to them the third kind is form and place gasket or commonly referred to as fibbage in toyotaland or just sealer liquid rtv whatever you want to call it these are the three types that you're going to encounter some of them used to be sealer and then they move to a gasket like the 5vzfe but most of them most of the modern ones they have a metal gasket just like this ls we're working on most of them are very simple to access 2grfe can be possibly one of the tighter ones the toughest ones but they're all really most of them are diy friendly and easy to do yourself so we got the water pump out let's take a look at what we have here very very simple water pump i probably say this in every video and people you know guys always in the comments say this is not simple but it is simple ish now let's look at this water pump and let's identify the point of failure now if you haven't seen this this looks exactly to me like a water pump from a tundra sequoia with the 3ur this is not a 3ur but it's the same design remember these engines are very similar now if we look right here at this water pump this is the weep hole this is where they usually leak and then you'll see the trail going down but in this pump it's actually not the weep hole it's the gasket itself and if we look right at this area right here that's the point of failure right here you see how the gasket left the mark let's look at the gasket from the other side let me just identify the location right there this is the point of failure it's really hard to see it but there's actually a point where it started leaking through the gasket this is not a common one usually the pump will leak itself and you'll have issues but this one happens to be a gasket failure now of course we're at this point we're going to put a new water pump we're not going to you know play and just put a gasket and let's keep going no that's not a good idea at this point but one thing i will tell you about this style gasket whenever you see a toyota or luxurious gasket that is metal this is a metal gasket you see how it's a piece of metal then another metal then it's like a tri gasket by the way this is a this is why toyota over builds things because this gasket is actually the same style as a head gasket but the problem with these is just like a head gasket your surface have to be perfectly flat perfectly free of contaminant and when i say contaminants in this case what contaminants could we possibly have coolant is not one of them but the reminiscence of the old casket like these white lines you see here we have the same thing over there pretty hard to show you on camera but i'll show you here like you see this piece of gasket this actually comes off so what i usually do in this case the same thing with the case of a head gasket you take a razor blade don't go overboard on this you just kind of slowly pass the razor blade there's anything sticking on the surface you're going to pick it up and now it's gone but then after that i take a scotch brite 3m pad just go over it smooth the surface don't go too much just a little bit just to take out anything you cannot you did not pick up with the razor blade give it a quick wipe reinstall your gasket and water pump and we're done but something important about these gaskets there's an oring right here if you go buy this aftermarket in some cases they will not come with it so you have to buy this separately but if we go look at the original one here's the original one we haven't even opened it let's open it here's that gasket they already put it in the kit so if you're doing this original here's how that water pump looks like new it comes with a gasket already and a new pump [Applause] if you go do this buy an original pump something about toyota pumps and let's see if this one has the same story this one does not see the pulley is the same thing as the original one the same round circle but if you go look at a case of a very common offender which is a 2g rfe engine 3.5 liter v6 they are notorious to leak and they had an actual problem with the water pumps they either start leaking or the bearing just disintegrates and now you have all kinds of rattling and this is super common on 2grs so it actually changed the design of that water pump completely and and the way to identify it is on the 2gr the original one will have a round pulley like this this is where the other pulley sits on it it's like that where the belt goes and you have the four bolts this is a similar design but when you take this off on the 2gr the original one is round the new one has cutouts right here that is the new style of water pump that is improved what is improved about it is the bearing and that's that's the thing that you want to know you go to place a water pump you got to get the new one on the 2gr not on this you got to get the new one otherwise you're getting old stock you're going to have this problem again don't use after-market water pumps i have seen after-market water pumps fail so prematurely on toyotas and that has to do with the coolant folks the long life coolant is actually not a great idea unfortunately we're stuck with them even if you go buy some high-end super mega expensive amsoil whatever coolant it's the same thing it's just the way it is with super long life coolant so if you want to mitigate the problems of long life coolant change it every fifty thousand miles or five years do not go over five years do not go over 50 000 miles you're gonna prevent so many problems with leaking like this like another thing that we've done before you've seen it on the video that this engine has is the coolant valley plate leak you're to prevent that and people have all kinds of theories about that the sealer was wrong and all the stuff unless you have it fail at a year old it's not the theater it's actually the coolant the red coolant that we're used to use the regular service coolant every thirty thousand three years you never had issues with it but again you replaced it every three years thirty thousand then lo and behold comes the long life coolant we first it was five years fifty thousand then it went five years a hundred thousand then now we're 100 000 or 15 years well i can guarantee you one thing in 15 years you're gonna replace one component that leaks before you end up replacing the coolant so you end up replacing it really earlier so if you want to prevent issues before this coolant that can attack seals and do all kinds of this stuff change it every five years 50 thousand and you won't have issues having said that we're going to put this thing together and toward the end i'm gonna talk about a few things specific to the allies because the bleeding on this can be a little tricky so the total cost for this particular job was just under eight hundred dollars we're looking at four hours of labor two gallons of toyota coolant they're right around twenty dollars per gallon the water pumps just over two hundred dollars i would never recommend you buy an aftermarket one usually they're not that much cheaper and they're really not the best design so always go original water pumps when you do these now we also ended up replacing a drive belt with 61. it's really not most people look at water pump jobs as oh my god they're so expensive when you add the labor some of these jobs you know we make it make it look easy here it's not really that bad but still you got to quote what the book says diy wise you have to be careful with these you gotta understand before you start this job not only look as much youtube videos as you can find or read the manual on it make sure you clearly understand and know the bleeding process and there is one thing about doing jobs like this you have to be experienced with dealing with hoses you notice we're removing a lot of hoses here most of these hoses are old you can't be replacing every single little hose you take off that's just going to keep costing more to the customer and so you got to be careful to preserve these hoses and try to save as much as possible here you don't want to go in and just destroy everything or just say well everything in my way i'm just going to replace that is not good practice toyota hoses could easily last the life of the car if you're gentle with them when you take them off install the clamps and the current orientation however this ls460 being an ls460 decided to throw a small challenge at us as you'll see in a little bit so welcome to two days later because we had a little hiatus so here's what happened with this car we actually stopped working on it we had to order some more parts as i was putting everything you saw in the time lapse i put everything back together i'm checking that all these hoses are connected and i literally put my hand right here if you if you come close with the camera arrows i put my hand right here and immediately this connection point to the radiator just snapped right off let me show you the old radiator and we'll talk about this in case you own an ls460 you need to know about this here's the old radiator it just broke right off of here brittle plastic it was ready to break we literally just put our hands on it and it's gone so here's what lexus did actually for this because this is a common one the connection point to the radiator was tiny such a tiny little hose i mean this is a small hose this is the old hose you notice we're not reusing it so when you buy a new radiator and this is an original radiator from lexus when you buy a new radiator they actually updated the part and we have a much bigger and heavier duty connection to the radiator on that point so you actually when you pull it up in parts it it's a radiator and a new hose and new clamp so it would work because now the hose is much bigger here i mean let's compare these two this is a much bigger hose and a much bigger connection point right there so this is what we had to wait for parts were a little bit of an issue because i was supposed to arrive the next day it didn't we had to wait two days but now we are finally ready to bleed this thing i'm going to show you how to bleed it real quick and then we'll let it let this thing run and wrap up our video let me grab our clone funnel so this can be a little tricky to bleed you want one of these funnels you're just going to use it without an attachment but the other thing you want to get this open this is a bleeding point now normally this is the highest point in this system but actually if you look at it it is really not because you have this level right here and you have these two hoses that are higher but when i put the funnel and i put coolant in it it's actually going to be higher than that so that's why i recommend you actually use a coolant funnel so let's go ahead and fill it up the idea here is you want to put coolant until it comes out from here so actually before we do that let's put a rag underneath here so we can pick up any splash and not make a mess here so let's add our coolant now you can actually do is just leave this sitting here not tight just sitting there so you're ready to tighten it you notice the coolant will go down quick it won't be burbling as it comes down that's that's what we want so what i'm going to do in this case i'm going to be ready here to tighten it because this is the second gallon that we're adding they take right around two depends how much trains out and most of the time right around two we'll see how much this one takes there we go did you see that we have coolant coming out of here this is all full we're going to tighten this guy you do not want to over tighten this especially if this is an old radiator right now coolant stopped here in the reservoir so this system is technically initially blood it is not completely bled because remember we still got to open the thermostat and everything but you have your initial fill where it's not gonna airlock the system now i have to go wash my hands before we get in the car and start it and then we're gonna run the exhaust fan run this car with the fans off ac off everything off inside you're going to run it until the coolant fans cycle on then off on there off as soon as you start it though it wouldn't hurt to give it a few squeezes on the radiator hoses careful with the fans and everything just like this sometimes you can push more air out this way but in this case we don't have anything i don't see anything coming so let's get this thing started all right make sure our climate control is off that's it you're gonna we're gonna let this run for a while this engine is actually in great shape zero leaks zero issues what a beautiful car this one is this has been a pleasure to work on this after we had a few ls's that were misbehaving or just needed a lot of work this one water pump it's nothing this is very simple but folks the point is super long life coolant is actually not so much super long life coolant you keep it too long it's going to be attacking seals it's gonna start leaking everywhere don't let this coolant stay more than five years fifty thousand miles and if you have red coolant remember that that's three years thirty thousand so this is still long life but i wouldn't call it super long life because uh becomes counterproductive toward the end so with this car we're gonna wait for it to bleed we're gonna put all the covers give it a good clean give it a good test drive make sure everything is good and then we're done with this job folks i hope this video was helpful informative i hope you learned something new if you like it consider giving it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing to the channel check out some other videos and until the next video folks may the lord bless you and keep you and you have yourself a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 347,029

Keywords: why do toyota water pumps leak, toyota, toyota water pump, water pump, why water pumps leak, toyota water pump noise, toyota water pump leak, lexus, lexus water pump, toyota water pump replacement, water pump replacement, lexus water pump replacement, water pump seal, water pump noise, water pump leak, the car care nut, car care nut, tccn automotive, super long life coolant, scotty kilmer, car wizard, toyota maintenance, toyota problems, south main auto, rainman's ray

Id: MltsfDaC0rg

Length: 27min 49sec (1669 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 03 2022