Going to do preventative maintenance on my F -Type V6, 2018 with 50kkm and had it a week. Do i go Oem plastic parts again or RKXtech or euro amp. Ebay full off $100 china versions that i want to avoid. Will only keep the car 2-3 years. Plan is the y-pipe and ajoing and the heater pipe at rear. Will hold off on the water pump and thermostat for now, usless somebody can recommend good replacement. Only want to do this once and be done with it.

 

No opinion on that, but I’ll mention that when my dealer replaced the original seamed plastic pipes with seamless plastic (way back in 2020), they found the water pump was weeping a bit so they replaced that too.

 

Go OEM aluminum. If anything this can make your sale after a few years easier as OEM is OEM.

 

Metal, not plastic. Also, the labor to get to most of the cooling bits is the bulk of the labor to get to the water pump. Just do it.

 

This was our OEM water pump. Nothing ever dripped on the ground, but every month or so we needed to add coolant.

We got the EuroAMP kit that included the water pump.. No issues 2 years later...hasn't lost a drop!

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FWIW The kit we got had the wrong thermostat hsg, so our indie installer sold us a new JLR plastic one.

 

The water pump is far more likely to need service before the pipes. Switch to the RKX brass elbow on the bypass hose. Manifold pipe and thermostat assembly are next. My crossover pipes went 8 years and 95,000 miles and never leaked. I switched to the new factory cast aluminum crossover pipes and new factory plastic everything else. As mentioned above, labor can be the big line item.

 

What is your take on fitment of the brass elbow? I have read folks have had a lot of trouble with them leaking.

 

I know I will be in the minority on here, but the updated smooth plastic pipes are just fine for the service life of the other cooling system components and the seals on the pipes themselves. The first gen 'split' pipes are horrible and tend to fail catastrophically and make a major issue out of it, but the later ones will seep around the o-rings, just like the metal ones will with age. I have not personally fit the metal pipe, I know the plastic ones can be done without removing the blower if you are doing the water pump, so for me that's the quickest/easiest way to solve it, done dozens of them. I'm not disputing the metal pipes will last longer, but I think the rest of the soft parts will lead to you being back in there by the time they give issues anyway.

 

I’ve only used the RKX version of the brass elbow kit, I’ve done 5 of them and had no problems. It is important to inspect the port for remnants of the old plastic pipe. This is how the round plastic pipes fail, the bitter ends deteriorate up past the O rings.

 

When the dealer did my 2017s pipe change, I believe the water pump had to be replaced because it wouldn't go back together with the new pipes. I could be mistaken, or the tech, but it was done under warranty, so no cost to me if the pump was replaced or not, but it was detailed on the work order.

 

Second this