All

Driving home this afternoon from work and received a charging system fault warning. Then the temp gauge went up and dropped back down. Worried I got over in the right lane to get of the highway and the car died. Called a tow and had it brought back to the house.

Upon inspection I found that serpentine belt had broken. The coolant reservoir was completely empty. I cleaned the car on Sunday, and everything was fine (full coolant) I also noticed that the idler pully behind the thermostat assembly was chewed up. I know the belt and pully have to be replaced.

My concern is once I inspected the water pump, I noticed the pully cannot be spun by hand. I replaced the pump about a year ago when I did all the hoses. There was no coolant in the valley underneath the super charger. When I took the thermostat assembly out the coolant did not have any oil mixture and removing the oil filter showed good clean oil.

Should the water pump spin with some force? The bad thing is I have a steep driveway, so the tow placed the car in front of the house meaning I have to work from the top down

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I really don’t want to change the water pump in front of the house because I believe to make sure a good seal is made between the water pump and oil cooler the supercharger has to be removed.

I may just put a new belt and pully on and try to get it in the garage where I can tear it apart and not have it in the weather.

 

The water pump should spin freely. If you can't turn it by hand it's toast. It might have frozen and taken the belt with it, but in any case it needs to be replaced.

 

Can’t answer any of your questions but if you just need to put it into your garage, the trans can be put into neutral by some mechanism in the center arm rest storage area without turning the car on.

 

Lizzardo,
Thank you for the quick response. Do you think i could get the water pump on without supercharger removal. I wonder what would cause it to lock up. I will order on tonight with a pully. Where do you think the coolant went? Thanks for the help

 

Agree with lizzardo. How far did it go/drive without the belt/water pump?

The big q: Did it overheat?

 

JCB-memphis,
got the warning about charging, then a few miles later temp went from normal half point to 3/4 which caused a warning. pulled off and belt snapped, and car died. If it did overheat i would imagine it was very quick. I guess once I replace the water pump and belt. i will know if there is other damage by how it runs.

 

Good luck - fingers crossed.

 

I haven't changed the water pump on one of these before so I don't know if it can be done without S/C removal. I would expect so given the typical service life.

My guess would be that that the seal between the impeller and the bearing leaked and cause the bearing to seize.

 

If your car will start, you can just run it as is, if only going up your driveway to the garage. The car will not heat up fast enough to worry. Unless your driveway is miles long, then nevermind lol. That being said, I believe you can replace the waterpump without removing supercharger etc, from reading other posts. Good luck and keep us posted. Definitely the pulley on waterpump caused the belt to shred, if it's not spinning.

 

If you have an early F-type with hydraulic steering assist, might be hard to steer - I assume the hydraulic pump runs off that serpentine belt.

 

It sure does!