On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:40:39 -0700, Ron wrote:
I can't even remember that last time I had a water pump fail....probably
sometime in the early 80's on a Celia that had about 150K on it.

I had one go on a Rover 216 (which had a Honda-built engine) at around
100k - I think it cost me about $60 for the pump and $40 for a new belt
(made sense to do that while I was at it). Took me a couple of hours to
do the work, so it wasn't too bad - the real pain was having it fail at
work rather than home, so I had to get a tow from a friend.

Oh, and I just checked the owners manuals for my Honda, Toyota, and
Mazda...and there is ZIPPO about replacing the water pump.

I don't think I'd expect that to be in the owner's manual; it's more of a
factory manual kind of thing.

On a lot of engines I've seen, the water pump runs at very high RPM,
which is why they have a harder life than a lot of other engine
components. They're not normally expensive, and it's usually trivial to
do the work while the timing belt's being done anyway. Alternators, PAS
pumps etc. don't stop the car from working and are easy to do without a
significant amount of work, so they can just be replaced when they fail.

cheers

Jules