I have just replaced the water pump, and the job is a swine. Seems that cars are now designed with no regard to doing repairs, only with regard to assembling at the factory. Would a dealer workshop pull the engine out?

The pump is held on with four 10mm AF nuts that can only be reached by a socket through the spokes of the pulley wheel. Between that pulley wheel and a chassis member is a gap of only about 20mm, so no room for a ratchet handle. Fortunately I have an extensive tool set (more than most professional mechanics - I know, I've been one) and the only way I found to do it was to use a 3/8" drive 10mm AF socket (I think a 1/2" drive socket would have been too big to go in) on a very short extension that slightly protruded from the holes in the pulley wheel. In the drive end of that extension I put a 25mm length of ~3/8" square rod (from a door latch) held in by a blob of grease. I was then able (just) to turn this with a 3/8" AF open ended spanner at about an eighth of a turn at a time (ie flipping the spanner over between each movement).

All this has to be done from below with the OS wheel and arch linings etc removed. The socket/extension/rod assembly had to be put between the pulley spokes at the lowest point and the pulley then carefully turned to raise it to the actual nut positions, as there is only room to put it in at the lowest point. You cannot see the nuts (or much else) during all this, you are going entirely by feel. It took me about an hour just removing the four nuts, but I was a bit quicker replacing them.

That was after draining the water of course, for which there is no specific provision. You cannot easily reach the bottom rad hose (I never even identified it), and most of the hose clips are nasty crimp things (fast for factory assembly) that are hard or impossible to remove without damaging the hose (and destroying the clip of course). What I did was to remove the hose from the bottom end of the overflow tank (having syphoned it out first) and push a long 1/4" rubber tube down it to syphon as much more out as possible. I then bent to hose down towards a bowl on the floor to drain more out. This did take the level at least below the level of the pump.

The old pump was leaking past the static body seal; the running seal on the spindle seemed OK judging by the water stain pattern. Only did 12,000 miles.

Hi.
Sounds like a nightmare. Why do manufacturers insist on making things difficult to service or repair? Perhaps it's easy to build in the first instance but surely designers have to be taught to include ease of service. No doubt these things are done on computers or with CAD funny that I've never seen a computer with arms and a spanner!!
Its not just cars, when I retired from the TV trade you'd need to remove umpteen screws and remove sheets of tin plate before you would even see any electronics on a flat TV, my forum name TV from 1958 only required two bolts to be taken out to slide the whole cabinet off .... Progress.
Back to the water pump, that's low miles for a failure too, I for many years have added soluble oil to the coolant in my cars, I'd filter off the oil from Barr's Leaks and use that, never had a water pump failure in all my motoring life of 47 years. It was a tip from an old motor engineer.

murphyv310 said:

surely designers have to be taught to include ease of service

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They should be made to work sometimes on the cars they are responsible for designing!

murphyv310 said:

No doubt these things are done on computers or with CAD funny that I've never seen a computer with arms and a spanner !!

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Well you could say that the robots that build cars at the factory are computers with spanners; but their arms can be made in any funny shape and length required, and their fingers can be much thinner and stronger than ours.

murphyv310 said:

for many years have added soluble oil to the coolant in my cars

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I had assumed that anti-freeze already contained some sort of lubricant. But in my case the spindle seal did not seem to be the culprit, but the static body seal which is a square section O-ring - perhaps it had a defect, I should examine it.

Some cars in the past had owner-accessible coolant drain taps. My father had a car with proper brass 1/4" taps, one on the rad and one on the engine block. Back in the day some people did not use their cars in winter (ours was only for outings), and the handbook advised you to drain down for winter to avoid freezing.

Dr Zhivago said:

...the handbook advised you to drain down for winter to avoid freezing.

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That was in the days of iron engines and copper radiators.

Modern aluminium alloy parts must always be kept either completely dry, or completely covered by a properly inhibited coolant. If stored for any length of time wet, corrosion will soon take hold.

Most manufacturers recommend that the system is always kept topped up with the specified coolant. If the radiator has to be removed for more than 48 hrs, it should either be plugged and stored full of coolant, or have dry air blown through it until all moisture is removed.

For this reason, radiators obtained from breakers are commonly good only for scrap.

My Dad used to have a Moskvitch 427 which had water dump valves, the whole system would drain in less than a minute. The Skoda MB & S series had proper drain taps on the radiator and heater matrix, the latter being lower than the engine block would mean that it too would drain.
I also agree that alloy radiators must have a proper coolant mix at all times and not left empty. Mind you my first all alloy engined car a Commer Imp van was purchased in 1973 and thereafter lots of Skoda cars which had an alloy wet liner block and cast iron head, so lots of experience here on maintaining that type of engine, the Estelle had alloy radiators and heater matrix from 1976 so a very early adopter on a cheap car.