V6 Water Pumps

[Paul Bowman <PTBowman@domain.elided>]

Just catching up on recent Digests when I ran across:

"My favorite alfa innovation is 30,000 mile V6 Water Pumps."

Having seen this statement in numerous places both on the Digest and Alfa=

Owner it appears to have become conventional wisdom.  Yet my experience o=
n
an '88 Milano Verde has been that the original factory  pump lasted to
59,600 miles when I had it replaced (with an aftermarket pump) because it=

was starting to weep coolant from the shaft seal.  This month I had the
replacement pump replaced approximately 56,000 miles later.  I say
approximate because the speedometer/odometer was inoperable for about six=

months before replacement and I can only estimate the miles that elapsed
during that time.  The failure mode was the same.

Granted these are only two data points (although fairly consistent), but =
my
question is this:  did the 30,000 rule of thumb come from a few owners
having premature failures and others then using the conservative approach=

of replacement before failure? Or have there been truly widespread report=
s
of failures around 30,000?  Has anyone compared GTV-6 vs Milano vs 164
owner experiences?  Again what is important here is time to failure or ti=
me
to start-of-failure (as in my case), not "I replaced it at X miles becaus=
e
I was nervous it wouldn't last any longer".  Is periodic monitoring of th=
e
pump shaft for leakage and play adequate for predicting near failure? Or
have owners experienced catastrophic failure when things appeared OK just=

recently?


Paul Bowman
'88 Milano Verde
'86 Spider

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