DIY Replace water pump and drive belt

[tmoorez06]

It seems like everything happens at once, but when you hit over 100k miles on your car, these things are likely to come up. I have a 2006 Z06 as my daily driver, and I commute 73 miles per day. I couldn't think of a better way to drive those miles, as I love this car! Hats off to GM for building this machine.

I just did a brake job myself (my first time). My A/C compressor ( or maybe just the compressor clutch) nees relpacing and just the other day, I found out that the waterpump needs replacing.

Replacing the water pump must take priority over the A/C compressor. You can drive with no A/C, but you can't without keeping your engine cool.

If the entire A/C compressor needs replacing, I will leave that to more capable hands. If I can get by with just replaing the clutch, I might try it myself.

Now back to the topic of this thread. I'm considering replacing the water pump myself and hopefully, while I'm at it, the drive belt as well.

My questions are:

1. Has any of you novice mechanics done this before?

2. What is the difficulty level (1 - 10) scale? Keeping in mind that I did manage to successfully replace the brake pads and rotors myself. How does replacing the water pump compare, as far as difficulty level?

3. I'd like to go ahead and replace the drive belt, therefore; how much more does this complicate the procedure?

Thanks for your time, consideration and input,

tmoorez06

[tmoorez06]

After some research, I decided to replace the water pump myself. I’m sure many people on this site had probably done this before, but this was my first time. I also went ahead and replaced the drive belt while I was at it. I learned a few things that some of you might find interesting, and maybe useful.

I found one of the biggest challenges was having enough room to work in. Having that massive LS7 in a relatively small compartment leaves little room to reach bolts and turn wrenches.

Due to the limited space, I needed to remove and/or loosen parts to have enough room. It’s really the driver side bolts of the water pump, that were hard to get to. This is where I ran into a little bit of trouble.

After becoming very annoyed at how little room I had to turn my ratchet between the small radiator hose that runs from the top middle area of the radiator to the front top of the engine and the brake fluid reservoir, I decided to remove that hose, and loosen the brake fluid reservoir, so I could have more room to turn the ratchet (it gets old to only turn the ratchet about 1/64 of a turn each time!).

Well, during the process of removing that radiator hose, I quickly realized that it didn’t really go directly to the radiator, it actually was connected to two other hoses by at “tee” joint. After proceeding with its removal, I quickly learned that this tee joint was made of plastic and is easily broken! It broke off inside the hose, in the front, and when I tried to remove the tee from the hose that goes to the overflow, that part broke off too. I guess that after 100k+ miles, the heat and coolant chemicals can have that effect… C’mon GM, couldn’t you have made this part out of metal? I don’t think the extra 50 cents on top of a $60+k car would make much difference.

…Wait it gets better. I went to the local Chevy dealership to see if they had that part in stock (yeah, like they really would), the parts guy looked it up, and said “You can’t just buy the plastic tee, it comes with an entire assembly that you have to buy. It includes all the hoses and clamps, for $132.86”. That pretty much floored me… and of course they didn’t have it in stock, so I tried another Chevy dealership, and he said he had it at the warehouse and could have it the next day… I really didn’t want to take another day off work, but I told him to order it anyway.

Really ticked-off and wanting to finish the job that day, I went to several auto parts shops in the area. They had all sorts of hose connectors, but not one that connects two 3/8” hoses to a ¼” hose.

My one last hope was to go to a hardware store and look at what they had. After looking through all their hose connectors, I found a solution!!! I found a brass T (or is it tee?) fitting that you can screw hose connectors of different sizes. I bought the tee, two brass 3/8” connectors and a brass ¼” connector. You just screw the four pieces together and there you go! Better than oem! See picture of the three brass fittings and what’s left of the original tee fitting below. I suggest using a high temperature thread sealant when screwing the fittings together.

I used a drill to carefully drill out the pieces of the plastic fitting that was broken and stuck in the hoses. You have to be very careful not to damage the hose. Then took and air compressor to blow out any plastic debris left in the hoses.

That took care of that issue. The other caveat is that if you loosen the power steering fluid reservoir, be careful about pulling too hard on the hose that connects down behind the power steering pulley. Notice in the picture where I drew the red circle. The hose is not squarely fitted. Because of its position and tight quarters it’s virtually impossible to easily put it back in place easily.

Time constraints, and work obligations required me to leave it like that, until next weekend… I’ll have to keep and eye ont it this week, but so far it’s holding on okay. I’ll have to go back in and secure that hose. It looks like I’ll need to pull off the power steering pulley. Is that hard to do? Does it require any special tools?

Thanks,

Tmoorez06

[NORTY]

Just goes to show you~ it's never as easy as it is on tv!

[LLC5]

All vehicles are designed to be quick/inexpensive to put together on an assembly line, not to be taken apart and reassembled.

Some more so than others. :)