I did the plenum repair on my truck. It started up fine, and is showing good signs. My problem is when I was filling the coolant, a small leak came from one of the bolts on the water pump below the heater tube . Now there's a steady drip coming from it. I know I'm gonna have to tear it back apart and replace the gasket, but I wanted to know if I needed to replace the pump or not.

 

Not to hijack your thread but...

Someone also mentioned NOT to get the gasket set with the sleeve in it. Maybe someone can chime in on that as well.

 

If it's just one bolt, pull the bolt, put some RTV on it, put it back in, torque it down to spec. Done. If it continues to leak, THEN think about pulling the pump.

No, if you are just doing the gasket, you don't have to replace the pump. However, if it is still the original pump, wouldn't be a bad idea to put a new one on.

The sleeve is for the front crank seal. I hate them. They have NEVER gone on properly for me, and always have a wrinkle, so, will never actually seal, and will eat the seal in short order. The idea behind those is, if there is a groove in the balancer where the seal rides, that prevents it from sealing properly. A FAR better solution is an 'offset seal', the sealing lips are move a bit, so they are on a different spot on the balancer.

I have only seen TWO cranks that were scored so bad, a stock replacement seal wouldn't work. Both were on severely neglected trucks, that I informed the owners that repairs simply wouldn't be worth the expense. (simply because of YEARS of neglect.)

 

Thanks for the replies and putting up with my beginner questions. I appreciate it.