Getting to bolts for the water pump

[veeman]

Just had a ball over the weekend getting my 1.5 ready to start in the cabby.  All was going well until I filled it with coolant and I noticed a steady stream coming from the water pump weep hole.  D'oh!  Water pump time.

Anyway, I tried pulling off the alt and A/C compressor to get at the two top water pump housing/alt bracket  bolts (the ones that bolt it to the block) and found I could only get to the lefthand side bolt.  

Is there a trick to getting at those two bolts or what?  It seems the pump is in the way.  What a pain!

I ended up taking the lower pulleys back off along with the timing belt, then removing the intermediate shaft pulley (breaking it in the process...I had a spare ) to finally get at the water pump half with the impeller on it.

Am I missing a shortcut or what?  Any BTDT?

[chrissev]

Just had a ball over the weekend getting my 1.5 ready to start in the cabby.  All was going well until I filled it with coolant and I noticed a steady stream coming from the water pump weep hole.  D'oh!  Water pump time.

Anyway, I tried pulling off the alt and A/C compressor to get at the two top water pump housing/alt bracket  bolts (the ones that bolt it to the block) and found I could only get to the lefthand side bolt.  

Is there a trick to getting at those two bolts or what?  It seems the pump is in the way.  What a pain!

I ended up taking the lower pulleys back off along with the timing belt, then removing the intermediate shaft pulley (breaking it in the process...I had a spare ) to finally get at the water pump half with the impeller on it.

Am I missing a shortcut or what?  Any BTDT?

haha, been there, done that.  I rigged up a tool to get at the left hand side bolt using a straight handle socket wrench (just a handle and a male end that went into the female end of the socket), sticking that down the hole onto the bolt, and then putting a bar through the hole in the top of the wrench and hitting it with a hammer till the bolt came loose.  The right hand bolt was a little trickier.  With three bolts undone, I hit the alternator bracket with a hammer until I loosened it, then used a box end wrench on the right bolt and was just able to move it about half an inch.  Then I moved the alternator bracket more back and forth by hitting it with a hammer until I loosened the right bolt more, then put an open ended wrench on it from the top (like right down on top of it, vertically, not horizontally like you would normally do) then put a bar through the box end of the wrench and loosened the bolt out that way.  Installation was the reverse of removal.  You can also just remove the injection pump.  This is actually quicker than removing the intermediate shaft pulley to get at the bolts for the pump end of the water pump.

[lord_verminaard]

On my gasser Rocco with AC it took me a good 3 hours of ripping crap off to get to the water pump.  Now that the huge, 900 lb AC brackets are permanantly gone, doing the water pump takes about 20 minutes.

I'm not sure what the brackets look like on the diesels, but I'm guessing that it's pretty close to the same.  They make working on these cars much harder than it needs to be.

Brendan
84 Scirocco 8v
00 Camaro L36 M49

[Patrick]

The only way I could find to pull the air conditioning bracket on a 92 Jetta was to pull the injection pump. This was with the engine out of the car and a shop full of tools!

[fspGTD]

I can't really say how on a car with A/C.  If it didn't have A/C, I can say that you could get to this bolt with a 13mm wrench approaching from the bottom right (as you are looking into the engine bay from the front.)  Or alternatively possibly you can put together a 13mm 1/4" or 3/8" drive socket and extension combination that will reach it.  Water pump can definitley be removed without taking off the injection pump (at least on a car without A/C  :lol: )  Good luck!

[veeman]

Thanks for the advice... I tried and tried to get to those bolts without moving the pump, but couldn't get on the righthand bolt.

>>Water pump can definitley be removed without taking off the injection pump (at least on a car without A/C Laughing )

If it can be done on any AC car, I'd love to learn how!  Things are definitely tight in there.  One more reason I'd love to ditch that A/C setup.  The other day I even thought of making my own non-A/C bracket out of some scraps and spare gas parts.

In retrospect, it would have been much easier for me to take off the pump than the intermediate pulley, I guess....  I'll know next time.

[chrissev]

I can't really say how on a car with A/C.  If it didn't have A/C, I can say that you could get to this bolt with a 13mm wrench approaching from the bottom right (as you are looking into the engine bay from the front.)  Or alternatively possibly you can put together a 13mm 1/4" or 3/8" drive socket and extension combination that will reach it.  Water pump can definitley be removed without taking off the injection pump (at least on a car without A/C  :lol: )  Good luck!

ever tried it on an A2?  A1s are a breeze.  A2, different alternator bracket.  Left bolt can be reached if you are creative, right bolt, you can touch it and see it, but a box end wrench, if put on it, will turn about an inch then no more, and you can't adjust it.  Best way to do the right bolt is with one of those ratcheting type box end wrenches that click and can be reversed with the little switch on the wrench body.  It comes out easy with one of them.

[chrissev]

Thanks for the advice... I tried and tried to get to those bolts without moving the pump, but couldn't get on the righthand bolt.

for future reference, the secret to the right hand bolt is the ratcheting box end wrench.  Makes removal a breeze.

[veeman]

I had to remove the same bolts again on my TD engine.  This time I used a swivel 13mm and an extension on the upper left hand bolt and then tried a ratcheting closed end wrench on the left one.  My wrench was too big to fit / swing (GearWrench brand), so I ended up coming up with another solution.



Chop saw and the mig box to the rescue.   Worked great although I did have to grind on it to get more "swing".  I think I'm going to call that wrench the "hero wrench".    I think they make some wrenches that access remote bolts, but I didn't have one at the time...