Well, the last two times my 16v's water pump let go I was lucky and I wasn't too far from Civilization. The low water level dash light came on with that ever so scary momentary red blink like the reactor is going to blow. If the water pump bearing lets go you will hear it when the engine is at idle if you have the hood open and are standing near the v-belts, this will usually be associated with steam and fluids draining from the water pump area if the engine is at temp. I am not sure other than constant overheating how you would figure out that the impeller had decayed to the point that it was no longer moving enough water. We are lucky and most if not all of our 16v engines have two ways you can monitor the internal heat levels, namely the Oil & Water Temps.
I'm usually more concerned with the digital oil temp readout as it truly indicates what's going on in the engine, but the water temp gauge will either read incredibly low when your cooling system has leaked all of it's water out through a busted hose/head-gasket/heater-core, or water pump failure and your engine oil heat will surpass the 250F level and keep climbing till you turn the motor off or burn it up till it seizes with continued use. If your thermostat fails the water temp gauge will continue past the normal operation center and suspiciously keep climbing rather quickly, smaller water hoses will start to blow or spring leaks before the gauge hits the maximum heat reading. My current situation with my GLI leads me to believe that the seal went then maybe the bearing as it is now making the metal/metal noise at idle, I keep adding distilled water to the system until I can take it to the service shop tomorrow to keep things cool. It's not leaking that fast so I can get away with it for now. You all should change your coolant once a year and replace the Thermostat at the same time to ensure reliability and proper care of the coolant system. Only use distilled water and the VW approved anti-freeze when refilling the system. I use Redline Water-wetter to help keep my system as cool as possible... Plan on making it a habit to change your water pump every 50,000 miles even if it hasn't failed, earlier if your v-belts had been adjusted too tight. Having a failure like this on any long trips from home in the country where German parts can be hard if not impossible to find can and will ruin your week or at least your trip. We all enjoy the small yet powerful 16v power plant, but with great power, comes even greater heat output. The more you mod for HP, the more you need to mod to keep your fire breathing engine cool. Kind regards, Ryan Lewis Webmaster & Owner Come Get Modified!!! <http://www.glirealm.com/> -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 10:32 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [A2-16v] 16v Water pumps How do you know when the waterpump is going bad,....or does it just stop working? ~ Josh _______ CycleUnion ~ The global motorcycle Community http://cycleunion.zeroforum.com/zeromain _______________________________________________ A2-16v mailing list [email protected] http://maillist.myip.org/mailman/listinfo/a2-16v For list archives, see listinfo link above.
