How do you replace the water pump on a 1989 Toyota truck?

Answer 1

I just did that. And it reminded me why I don't work on vehicles. As with all repairs, first disconnect the battery. For the '89 4 cyl (22RE), the manual will tell you to first drain the cooling system, then remove the radiator fan shroud and the radiator fan/clutch mechanism. You will have more room to work in if you also remove the entire radiator as well (involves only 4 more bolts, and the upper/lower radiator hoses). Water pump itself has 5 bolts of one size, 1 longer one that goes into the timing chain region and 3 flanged nuts you have to take off. Remove all the old gasket material. Then replace water pump with the new one with gasket and sealer around it (for good luck), and then all that other stuff (radiator fan plus shroud, and radiator). Of course, if the water pump that died or is dying is the original, I learned the hard way that the old bolts are fragile (I guess) as I suppose they get fatigued after all those miles on a hot vibrating engine, so after I snapped off the heads of a couple of bolts, even though I was very careful not to, I learned that it is better to just get new ones when you buy a new water pump. You would think the water pump would just have these new bolts and nuts with it, but no such luck. Plus it took another couple of days for the bolts to get from Chicago to Minneapolis/St. Paul. Plus, I took the precautionary step of also replacing the thermosat as the last time I did this (some 30 years ago, I learned that replacing the water pump changes the dynamics of the cooling system so that it is likely the themostat will go kaput anyway, so you might as well just replace that as well. That sits right on top of the engine and requires removal of the 2 bolts holding down the thermostat housing. Then I flushed out the cooling system, put on a couple of new heater hoses while I was under the hood, and it started right up. Sounds easy, but it is really tight under the hood and my wife is not very patient even though it was my vehicle out of commission. Good Luck!