Hi All

Just completed a water pump swap on my 2000 plate 4.0 v8. If anyone is thinking of doing it and is competent with a spanner, then go for it. Pretty straight forward, with no special tools.

Completed in 2hrs in the driveway, following the JTIS Manual

All i did was basically the following:

Water pump is situated at the top of the engine, in the middle (big dome pulley with three bolts)

• Removed air intake pipe
• Removed radiator plastic top shroud
• 8mm socket on centre pulley, 3 in total to slacken
• then use a 3/8 socket ratchet in the aux belt tensioner. You will see the square hole in the front of the tensioner arm, place the socket in and turn the tensioner to your left
• Slide the belt off the water pump pulley (remove completely if you like, but make a note of the routing to make re-installing easier) I left it in place
• now remove the pulley bolts that you already slackened
• I then found the pulley was stuck to the water pump. Just spray a little wd40 into the holes and and wire brush a little (careful not to spray it on the pulleys and belt). Then i placed a bar behind the pulley and gently levered it away from the engine - took a while to break it loose, but eventually it worked.
• The pump is held on by 5 x 8mm bolts. Just slacken them all off and remove the bolts. Place them to one side for later.
• Now you should really drain all the system before you start this job, but i couldn't be bothered as i only had water and no anti freeze, so it didn't matter if it went all over the pulleys
• Then just pull the water pump and it will come away from the engine block
  
• When checking mine over it looked fine, the plastic propeller was in good condition, with no cracks or brittleness. Looked brand new if i'm honest!
  
• The new pump which i sourced was a OE part, which i picked up for £38 + vat from GSF auto parts, ordered at 9am, picked up at 12pm same day. The part was upgraded but was plastic internals still. Apparently many manufacturers have gone back to plastic now, since when the metal ones were failing, they would destroy the cooling system, where as the plastic ones don't cause as much damage. My thoughts are if my car has covered 115k and 15 years on this one, then a new one should out live the car.
  
• Next you have to clean up the face of the block to remove any old sealant.
• The new pump comes with a new gasket. I put a little instant gasket on both sides of the gasket, just to hold it in place.
  
• Refit is reverse of removal, just torque up the bolts on water pump to 8nm + 90 degrees (quarter turn) and the pulley bolts to 10nm.

and that's it....not bad at all

Hope this helps someone else....