Might as well start carrying 4 spare tires....

 

My factory pump went at ~95k. Pump #2 started leaking already at 130,500k. Hoping pump #3 lasts quite a bit longer...

I've been going by the 'change it when it starts leaking' approach and I have caught it in time to coordinate the repair each time. However, I do tend to be very attentive to my truck's oddities or any changes, smells, etc.

 

You must go nuts if any passengers fart.

 

That's why I don't put it up to a democratic vote!

 

HA! Normally don't have passengers.

Really though. Discovered both water pump failures this way, and valve cover leaks. I'd say new smells are often your first awareness of an issue.

Shoot, when the valve covers were seeping, I could even tell when I was close to needing an oil change by the different smell as the oil got dirty.

 

I had to do my '96 with a 5.2 on the side of the road and could not remove the fan clutch. It was a difficult job to pull off with a weak flashlight on the side of the road. And it did shred a belt that was very recent. So the more I think about it, I'd definitely rather do it at home at my convenience.

 

^ But therein lies the problem, if you're doing preventative maintenance on parts based only on mileage of the truck because of fear of being stranded in BFE where do you draw the line?

It's a slippery slope....

 

That's why folks lease, and get new vehicles every couple of years.

 

I draw the line at parts that are not at or near their end of service life. I do that because I know that it costs way too much in both time and money to just lay around waiting for preventable failures to occur and possibly cascade.

I spent quite a number of years working as a field engineer and got to see the difference between waiting for failures and proactively replacing parts at end of service life. The cheapskates who waited for failures always suffered many multiples of the downtime the proactive customers experienced, and always paid a lot more, too. The cheapskates paid a lot more to keep systems that were failure prone while the proactive folks paid a lot less to keep systems that were reliable. It seems a pretty easy decision.

I was always happy to see those cheapskates who were just too stupid to see that they were costing themselves money. All those times I had to haul my tired backside out at midnight for an emergency service call I took a beating because I was on salary, but then when it came time for it I'd sell them a new system and pocket the commission that more than made up for the previous beatings. Commissions the smart customers didn't pay because their systems weren't unreliable boxes of crap.

Being cheap is too expensive and being lazy is too much work.

 

I had decided to replace the waterpump because I prefer to do it in my garage at my convenience instead of in the dark, on the side of the road (last experience was not fun). I was also replacing the plenum gasket and doing the keg mod at the same time. After tearing into it, I realized PO had recently replaced the water pump. It looked and felt (bearing) new. This would explain why the coolant was new and that I could not get any sediment out of the coolant system when I flushed it. So it appears the flush and pump replacement had just been done. The hoses were all recent also. I left pump as is, and replaced the thermostat and coolant temp sensor. Got my money back for the pump and have the piece of mind of knowing I won't have to worry about water pump failure.