Hello everyone,

I really suck at writing short posts, so I'll summarize what's below: I'm hoping for advice/insight on replacing the water pump on my 3800 Series II engine, and also any suggestions for anything else I should look at while I'm in the process of replacing the water pump.
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I'm a little new to working on my car, and I could really use a little help. I intend to replace my water pump later this week, and I was hoping someone might be able to give me some advice and/or point out some things I might want to look at while I'm in the area. I did do a search for related topics in this forum, but most of what I found pertained to 3.4L engines-- I'm not sure if the process is the same for mine, so I do apologize if my post seems too impulsive.

Between my research and the advice of a few car-inclined friends, my understanding is that the process is fairly simple for my engine. From what I understand, I just need to get the intake stuff out of the way, take off the belt, unbolt some sort of cap, and then the water pump sits right behind that.

If it helps at all, the rationale for replacing the pump is an unexpected really-hot engine one day. I noticed smoking, hesitancy, etc. one day and found the problem to be that my radiator had gone almost empty. Unfortunately, my sensors were showing everything to be nominal at the time, so I didn't notice the problem until I had finally stopped the car and the wind stopped blowing all the smoke away. Once I got the engine cooled down, I promptly replaced my coolant temp sensor. I also noticed that water was dripping out of what seems to be the "weep hole" for my water pump, so I bought another water pump too. I'm -hoping- that, between the new sensor and new water pump, I won't have any more unexpected empty radiator problems.

So, again, my request to the forum is for any advice/insight on replacing my water pump, or perhaps any suggestions on other things to check/replace while I'm in the process.

Thanks in advance for anyone's time/commentary!

 

easy, really though you dont even have to take off anything to get to it, i think it took me 30 mins? and it was my first one...


btw be happy it isnt an LT1 water pump (took me 8 hours)