My advice is to go with the brand that gives you the best warranty.

 

Thanks Serpentor; I'll check out the warranty information for each pump.

 

Your welcome glad I could help.

 

Hi Guys,

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I have a follow-up question. Originally, I was told by a service rep at a dealer that my water pump is leaking, and he showed me that my water pump had a little coolant on it. I called a different dealer to get a quote on replacing the pump, and the service rep told me that he's never seen one go bad before 200k miles. I know it'll be different for everyone, but that made me think that maybe I should look into it a little more before just deciding to have the pump replaced.

Looking at the pump that's on my car now, I saw that it had maybe about 2 tablespoons worth of coolant caked onto it, which I removed with a screwdriver. I don't know if this is how it normally is when it dries, but the dried coolant was sort of pliable. I don't know if there's more of this caked coolant maybe blocking the weep hole, but I drove the car for 10 miles and didn't notice any moisture or drops of coolant. When driving the car everything sounds fine, but with the hood open, I can hear a consistent low sort of chirp (or squeaky hinge) sound every half a second or so; I'm not sure if this sound is normal though. Do you guys have any thoughts/recommendations?

Thanks again.

 

I can;t directly answer your question but I can give you my experience with 2 different outlanders. My first outlander was a 2003 (not the same engine as your 06) but I did the timing belt and waterpump. The oem belt was unitta which is a japanese company which is now owned by gates. I didn't look at the brand of the waterpump but I replaced it with an airtex pump. I drove the car for almost 2 years before selling it and there wasn't any issues with the belt, pump or tensioners.

My 2nd outlander was an 07 (not the same engine as your 06) and at ~148k the belt looked good (unitta) and the waterpump looked great (hitachi). Replaced them with gates belt and gmb waterpump. Let's see how they hold up but the gmb pump looked solid and identical to the oem hitachi.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience Sic_Lucky. It sounds like it could be a little early for my water pump to go (or maybe I just got unlucky and it is failing prematurely). Maybe I'll see if I can take it to another mechanic to get a second opinion before just ordering a new pump and having it changed. Thanks again!