Quote:
Originally Posted by ngoma
Brilliant! Could probably also see if the impeller vanes were corroded into nothingness.
|
No credit here for that idea, it's a common (but I agree very clever) procedure in the TDI world on the 1998 and up engines that very closely imitate the old D24 block architecture with internal TB driven water pump and tstat located just behind it. Those all came from the factory with plastic impeller pumps and they suffer from spun off impellers all the time, very high failure rate, so those guys are having to worry about this frequently, hence the check procedure they came up with, which luckily for us works on a D24 too. It seems like the plastic impellers on those little pumps are especially fragile, the D24 design (plastic or metal) is much beefier.
I have only ever seen firsthand one D24 water pump with a plastic impeller -- which I installed as an experiment around 10 years ago in my 760 TD, still working fine now. Much more common seem to be stamped or cast metal ones. So I would be somewhat surprised if the OP's van in this thread ends up having a plastic one. But it's possible, especially maybe more so overseas where they could be more widely seen. I think Tom Bryant has found one or two with plastic also. Then too, as you say, it if's metal it could have vanes eaten up by corrosion, or in theory one of those could also spin loose.