Well I spent the weekend replacing my water pump, timing belt, timing tensioner/pulley.
As you can see the old pump looks like it was starting to leak at the edges. I’m not sure if that or the weep hole was the source of my slow leak.
It is good to have piece of mind that the water pump was replaced at least once because I found it to be a GEBA pump with metal impeller. Based on wisdom online I was approaching the end of a safe service interval so now I have piece of mind.
While I had coolant drained, I went ahead and replaced the coolant ball because it was looking tired and I anticipated it cracking if not when I did this job, very soon. It was quite brittle (plus hard to see the coolant level).
Last, while I had everything drained I thought it would be a good time to replace the thermostat housing and coolant flange on the right side of the block with aluminum. I’ve already had one crack with age so just a little insurance. And since I was already removing a ton of stuff to do those I completed the SAI/n249/n112 delete. I picked up resistors and a plate from Carrot Top Tuning. They get mixed reviews but with the nature of these items I wasn’t too worried.
Don’t worry, I secured those hose clamps after taking the pic 🥴.
Apparently whoever halfway did the vac res delete left a few lines uncapped. I found the hardline coming from evap that hits a 3” soft line and then goes to the combo valve to be just open. When I removed the combi I capped that. Huge thanks to XDleader for the help understanding the rats nest of hoses and valves in there!
Anyway I buttoned her all back up, filled with coolant, let it burp, filled it again, and turned her over. I’m glad I took the time to triple check my timing because she runs like a champ! It was a little nerve racking to know if I was a little off it could boink the engine. 😵💫