I'm working on my brother in laws 1994 Jeep Wrangler.  The water pump bearings failed.  I was draining the coolant and popped the radiator cap off and thought I saw little metal slivers inside it.  When I got the pump off, I realized why.  The bearing allowed enough movement for the impeller to scrape the inside of the housing as well as let the pulley rub the outside.  Looks like I'll be flushing the motor really well and changing the rest of the cooling system.  Radiator is pretty gunked and leaks a bit so it needs replaced anyhow.  This poor kid can't catch a break either, in the last 200 miles he had to get the rear axle completely rebuilt when a C-clip broke and destroyed the gears.  Right before that the transmission had to be rebuilt when one of the rings fell apart and jammed in the 3-4 cluster locking it in neutral. 

Edited July 12, 20186 yr by Sycostang67

Sad part the water pump is purely a coolant flush issue. If the coolant was flush at a proper time you wouldn't eat the water pump bearing. I'm at nearly 350k miles on the OEM water pump on the Cummins. I've got 172k miles on the V8 water pump. Still to this day all shop I visit they all do the same thing test for freeze point but don't test for pH level. Then when the pH gets corrosive then it eats the bearings and any other metal the coolant touches.

 

Oreilly's sells the Ph test strips that also test for freezing point and level of additive protection. They're pretty cool because if you don't use them before the exiration date Oreilly's replaces them for free.

20 hours ago, Sycostang67 said:

I'm working on my brother in laws 1994 Jeep Wrangler.  The water pump bearings failed.  I was draining the coolant and popped the radiator cap off and thought I saw little metal slivers inside it.  When I got the pump off, I realized why.  The bearing allowed enough movement for the impeller to scrape the inside of the housing as well as let the pulley rub the outside.  Looks like I'll be flushing the motor really well and changing the rest of the cooling system.  Radiator is pretty gunked and leaks a bit so it needs replaced anyhow.  This poor kid can't catch a break either, in the last 200 miles he had to get the rear axle completely rebuilt when a C-clip broke and destroyed the gears.  Right before that the transmission had to be rebuilt when one of the rings fell apart and jammed in the 3-4 cluster locking it in neutral. 

 

Living up to it's name..

 

Just

Empty

Every

Pocket

Well it gets worse, so much worse.  Today I finished replacing the entire cooling system and sent the young man on his way.  About 2 hours later he calls me and says the motor made a knocking sound like something was in the fan and then stalled and he's afraid to run it.  I run down there, he fires it up and it sounds like someone clubbing a block of metal.  I look down and see a hole in the side of the oil pan where a rod had pushed through and oil all over the firewall.  The motor only has 105k miles, and I know they kept the oil changed, hell it was the only real maintenance they ever did.  The kid was getting it changed every month regardless of mileage until I told him to wait at least 3k miles between.  He's pretty sure he wants to get rid of it, but if he puts a new motor in everything will have been rebuilt except the front axle. 

I've dealt with pup's like this before. Last one I remember handling was an older Datsun truck and had carburetor issues. Once I got it started you could hear the connector rod banging away. I told him it was done. Nope, he was going to quit. Kept it running and knock got worse in a mere few second and locked up solid. Then he says he needs to get it running. I already warned him something was broke inside the engine hence why the starter couldn't twist the crank. 

 

I already knew the connector rod had broken free and jammed the crank. I told him I could drag start the truck. It actually did start. Running on 3 cylinders the connection rod was shoved there the block and left a fist-sized hole but it was running. 

I wish I could leave well enough alone, they called to see if I would test drive a truck for them for $7500 and my fat mouth opened and said I could put a new engine in the jeep for $2500.  Why do I keep creating work for myself.    They are currently discussing the option. 

Sounds like they got more than it's worth in it so putting a new engine would be the better option so they could recoup some of the money in use.