Water pump
- Thread starter ColoDisco
- Start date
Colin Hughes
Explorer
Actually, I should have said, 300k (kilometres), about 190k miles. I've had it for almost 4 years now. Bought it from my LR tech with 180k kilometres. Control arms, brakes, compressor, wiring along inside floor beside seats, etc was all done by him prior to my purchase. Except for the Can-bus wires in the rear wheel well and a couple of EAS issues, it's been the most reliable LR since my first D1.
Victory_Overland
Explorer
I think it comes down to availability and cost for some of us. I don't disagree with you one bit, on the same sense I don't agree with my decision or ColoDisco's either. My markup with shipping cost to Hawaii is another $50 minimum over the standard LR price on a good day. Amazon if I can find a geniune LR great, AB I pay shipping of another $30 on anything I order and add $5 for every pound of weight after. So your $150 is quickly almost $250 for my neck of the woods and to me quite honest, many others on this forum. Then there is the "oh, I drove over a Toyota and every rotating part that the radiator hit was replaced, no chances taken here!
My buddy has a Delco pump in his Yota with over 200k (Factory pump was comparable price to LR) on it, and another buddy with one in his Ford F150 (Factory pump was comparable price to LR) with a few 100K as well. Nobody here is questioning the quality of the LR pump, it's the price we have an issue with! Pretty sure LR didn't crack the code on space aged gaskets and water pump bearings that Delco didn't figure out with their lifetime warranty. As a matter of fact, VW and Audi use the same material and have a severe recall problem on their cold weather area cars. Ford and BMW are also having more water pump failures on non-metal impeller pumps in the cold weather areas. If the coolant and warm up ratio is not perfect on the vehicle, the impeller rapidly expands and contracts leading to higher failure rates, this is physics and has the same effect, only less dramatic on metal components! Metal impellers were replaced with composite to help with weight which leads to higher bearing rate failures with metal impeller pumps in the long term. Metal impellers also had more drastic effects if coolant intervals were not changed appropriately leading to potential electrolosys theories. However, many of the plastic ones are now seeing the same failure rates in other areas becuase many car manufacturers use the same impellers licensed to their water pump. Bottom line, TLC and preventive maintanance will probably help us all.
My LR unit is on the shelf now as a spare since it sounds and rotates fine, but it did contact the radiator so $51 was a really easy decision. Point is, the question was "Does anyone have the Delco unit installed" and I responded YES with no problems AND gave a known comparison on my experience; ColoDisco is giving his and his water pump was leaking. So.......hmmmm, risk putting a new LR gasket in a questionable pump or buy new which costs $150+ because it says Land Rover on it? I can be wrong three more times and still be better on my bank account than getting the LR part. In all seriousness, if the pump fails, I'll let everyone know as work my warranty process. I'm not worried though!
No doubt I would go with an LR unit for just about everything if availability and money makes sense. Let's not forget, the awesome LR brake switch is fixed with a FOMOCO part, made in Mexico! $21 FOMOCO in stock part vs $41 LR part, special order, $15 shipping, be here in 6 weeks! Oh by the way, the LR part fails at twice the rate and the recommended replacement is the FOMOCO part.
OEM does not always make sense!
