water pump failure

[DaveP]

I suspect the above has happened to me, my car has been running very well until I did a long drive yesterday (3hrs) and about an hour in it started to overheat at speed, a quick blast of the heater solved it until I could get to the services. No mayo and no gas in the expansion vessel.

I had an issue before with a bottom hose collapsing and this had the same symptoms so I took a spare jubilee clip and clamped it round the hose. This did not help so I removed the thermostat at the next services, this didn't work either so I had to drive with the heater on full chat for the rest of the trip, it's fine at slower sppeds (up to 70kmh) but overheats very fast at anything much above this, all of which made my return journey today a very hot 6hrs.

I'm suspecting the water pump is weak and possibly the shaft is slipping at higher rpm. Does this sound like a feasible possibilty? I properly flushed the rad about a year ago and the coolant is new this month so it can't be a blockage but it's odd that the heater gets hot if the pump has failed completely.

 

[angel]

Check belt tension first of all.

Had almost the same symptom some 10 years ago, in the worst conditions (long trip, mountaineous roads, 4 people on board). I ended up blowing the head gasket, and when I removed the water pump in the process of removing the head, I noticed that the impeller was loose on its spindle! It was held with a pressed-on ring, that had eventually come loose...very strange. The pump was genuine Renault.
The heater can get hot because, even with no pump at all, there is some water circulation when it gets hot (thermosiphon principle).

 

[DaveP]

belts are both ok, so it looks like a new pump, there seem to be two types, one with a pulley and one without (though they may be the same part) any idea which one I need? 1984 tl 845

 

[angel]

Chances are that you need the one with a pressed -on pulley, check to see if your pump has a large (19 or 22mm) nut holding the pulley, if yes you will need the pump without pulley.

 

[DaveP]

Finally got round to removing the pump, the spindle has some play in it but seems to be functioning, I found a spare in good condition which has gone on and seems to have solved it, difficult to tell on shortish trip but I'll give it a run over the weekend to find out for sure.

Appreciate the advice as always Angel