water pump replacement

2nd day now that the radiator overflow is low or empty... i topped it off again and noticed a small puddle just at the gasket top left of water pump assy along with some wetness below possibly from the weep hole?

is the water pump replaceable without removing the radiator?
granted i know coolant will be drained, hoses removed along with the serpentine and fan obviously... am i missing anything?

 

Yes remove the fan and the shroud, the radiator can stay in place.

 

Sounds like you got it dude!

Careful with the 10mm bolts that hold the water pump on during re-assembly. They seem to get a little brittle from being heated up/cooled down over and over. I had one break as I went through the torque sequence putting on the new pump.

 

If you know your coolant is good and you want to save as much as you can, you could clamp the radiator hoses with, I call them clampers. It certainly won’t hurt to do a full flush. If you’re mixing it I suggest using distilled water

 

i am going to do the drain and refill... probably drain, fill it with distilled water, drain again... saw some cloudy particles floating at the radiator cap...
a real shame there's not a true flush option, id love to be able to power flush it...

 

Pull the heater hoses off, open the block drains and flush through everything with a garden hose while you have the pump off, let everything drain good, close the drains and reassemble, refill with 50/50 Antifreeze/distilled water and you should be good to go. The system should hold 2-2.5 gallons.

 

I bought an el camino, it had a single core plastic radiator, not nearly enough to keep it cool going uphill. So I replaced with a 3 core champion, big mistake. Anyhow I drained, then flushed multiple times with distilled, then filled with distilled & coolant. The mistake was buying a chinese radiator to begin with. They honored their lifetime warranty 3 times in 2 years.