Replace Oil Pump 2006 Caravan
#21
04-24-2012, 02:19 PM
There is a plastic impeller on the stock pump... right.... I think I'll be getting rid of that then and won't be replacing it with another mopar one since it would also come with a plastic impeller. Thanks for pointing that out, I had forgotten, and a lifetime warranty pump is always a good thing to have as we plan on keeping this van for quite some time.
I have invited my dad over to act as a spare set of hands and he isn't free until the may long weekend so I'll try to post back once I have some results but it will be a little while.
I have invited my dad over to act as a spare set of hands and he isn't free until the may long weekend so I'll try to post back once I have some results but it will be a little while.
#22
04-24-2012, 02:21 PM
There is a plastic impeller on the stock pump... right.... I think I'll be getting rid of that then and won't be replacing it with another mopar one since it would also come with a plastic impeller. Thanks for pointing that out, I had forgotten, and a lifetime warranty pump is always a good thing to have as we plan on keeping this van for quite some time.
I have invited my dad over to act as a spare set of hands and he isn't free until the may long weekend so I'll try to post back once I have some results but it will be a little while.
I have invited my dad over to act as a spare set of hands and he isn't free until the may long weekend so I'll try to post back once I have some results but it will be a little while.
I may be wrong on the warranty -- I thought I read somewhere it was a lifetime. But this is the pump I used:
http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...___#fragment-3
#23
05-21-2012, 10:14 PM
I finally got around to tackling the timing chain this weekend. I started at 8:30AM saturday and finished at 10:30PM. Quite the job I must say. I had printed the relevant sections from the FSM and unfortunately it was incorrect on a couple of details that soaked up a lot of time, the most annoying of which being how to remove the power steering pump. The FSM dictates it simply has a strut that runs to the front cover and the pump can stay in place. NOT TRUE! The front cover wraps around and inside the pulley for the P/S pump and you have to rotate the pulley to gain access to the bolts, constantly switching between socket depths and using a ratchet / not using a ratchet, then you have to twist the pump back and forth while spinning the pulley for 20 minutes (while constantly cursing the thing) before it will finally release itself from the bracket.
When I got down to it my water pump had no signs of leakage, and after seeing the steps involved I really feel it isn't so bad to change later so I left the old one on the car. I will change it when it eventually fails.
The timing chain itself is specified to have a maximum of 3.125mm of play as measured at the cam gear with the crank gear locked in place. Mine had approximately 4.5mm of play, well above the service limit. With the new gears and chain fitted it had about 0.5-0.75mm of play. I'm sure it has more play than that now, new parts always need to wear in a little.
I took the opportunity to completely drain the cooling system while I was doing this work. I figured since the coolant was now just over 7 years old it was due for a change (May 10, 2005 build date).
All in all, not a difficult job, just a time consuming one. The 2 biggest pains were the crank pulley and the vibration damper. I do not understand why Dodge/Chrysler felt it necessary to make these both friction fit, but that sure makes them crappy to get off. I destroyed my 2 jaw puller trying to release the vibration damper and had to rent a 3 jaw puller to get it off, and it took a ton of fighting around with the 3 jaw puller to finally get it to hook on the crank gear due to the lack of clearance behind the teeth as the block sticks out further than the bearing cap, allowing me to get 2 of 3 jaws on securely with 1 barely on there since the jaws were a hair deeper than the clearance available.
The only other difficulty I ran into was one of the water pump bolts snapped during removal, that took some time to drill out and forced me to finally buy a tap/die set to repair the threads.
I was fortunate enough to have a spare set of hands for most of the job to help when I would pull something in my shoulder struggling to reach over the engine with the front end supported on jack stands, and to help scrape gasket material off and to scrub parts clean.
It has been about 250km since the repair, with 5-6 heat cycles and about 5 hours of running time and I have not been able to observe the noise. In all fairness it would sometimes disappear for a couple of days before so it is possible that the noise is still there, but I am hopeful
On a side note, the thrust plate for the camshaft showed absolutely NO signs of wear, not even a circle mark from the cam touching it. I fitted the new one anyway, but I found it interesting the condition it was in.
When I got down to it my water pump had no signs of leakage, and after seeing the steps involved I really feel it isn't so bad to change later so I left the old one on the car. I will change it when it eventually fails.
The timing chain itself is specified to have a maximum of 3.125mm of play as measured at the cam gear with the crank gear locked in place. Mine had approximately 4.5mm of play, well above the service limit. With the new gears and chain fitted it had about 0.5-0.75mm of play. I'm sure it has more play than that now, new parts always need to wear in a little.
I took the opportunity to completely drain the cooling system while I was doing this work. I figured since the coolant was now just over 7 years old it was due for a change (May 10, 2005 build date).
All in all, not a difficult job, just a time consuming one. The 2 biggest pains were the crank pulley and the vibration damper. I do not understand why Dodge/Chrysler felt it necessary to make these both friction fit, but that sure makes them crappy to get off. I destroyed my 2 jaw puller trying to release the vibration damper and had to rent a 3 jaw puller to get it off, and it took a ton of fighting around with the 3 jaw puller to finally get it to hook on the crank gear due to the lack of clearance behind the teeth as the block sticks out further than the bearing cap, allowing me to get 2 of 3 jaws on securely with 1 barely on there since the jaws were a hair deeper than the clearance available.
The only other difficulty I ran into was one of the water pump bolts snapped during removal, that took some time to drill out and forced me to finally buy a tap/die set to repair the threads.
I was fortunate enough to have a spare set of hands for most of the job to help when I would pull something in my shoulder struggling to reach over the engine with the front end supported on jack stands, and to help scrape gasket material off and to scrub parts clean.
It has been about 250km since the repair, with 5-6 heat cycles and about 5 hours of running time and I have not been able to observe the noise. In all fairness it would sometimes disappear for a couple of days before so it is possible that the noise is still there, but I am hopeful
On a side note, the thrust plate for the camshaft showed absolutely NO signs of wear, not even a circle mark from the cam touching it. I fitted the new one anyway, but I found it interesting the condition it was in.
#24
05-22-2012, 08:10 AM
I finally got around to tackling the timing chain this weekend. I started at 8:30AM saturday and finished at 10:30PM. Quite the job I must say. I had printed the relevant sections from the FSM and unfortunately it was incorrect on a couple of details that soaked up a lot of time, the most annoying of which being how to remove the power steering pump. The FSM dictates it simply has a strut that runs to the front cover and the pump can stay in place. NOT TRUE! The front cover wraps around and inside the pulley for the P/S pump and you have to rotate the pulley to gain access to the bolts, constantly switching between socket depths and using a ratchet / not using a ratchet, then you have to twist the pump back and forth while spinning the pulley for 20 minutes (while constantly cursing the thing) before it will finally release itself from the bracket.
When I got down to it my water pump had no signs of leakage, and after seeing the steps involved I really feel it isn't so bad to change later so I left the old one on the car. I will change it when it eventually fails.
The timing chain itself is specified to have a maximum of 3.125mm of play as measured at the cam gear with the crank gear locked in place. Mine had approximately 4.5mm of play, well above the service limit. With the new gears and chain fitted it had about 0.5-0.75mm of play. I'm sure it has more play than that now, new parts always need to wear in a little.
I took the opportunity to completely drain the cooling system while I was doing this work. I figured since the coolant was now just over 7 years old it was due for a change (May 10, 2005 build date).
All in all, not a difficult job, just a time consuming one. The 2 biggest pains were the crank pulley and the vibration damper. I do not understand why Dodge/Chrysler felt it necessary to make these both friction fit, but that sure makes them crappy to get off. I destroyed my 2 jaw puller trying to release the vibration damper and had to rent a 3 jaw puller to get it off, and it took a ton of fighting around with the 3 jaw puller to finally get it to hook on the crank gear due to the lack of clearance behind the teeth as the block sticks out further than the bearing cap, allowing me to get 2 of 3 jaws on securely with 1 barely on there since the jaws were a hair deeper than the clearance available.
The only other difficulty I ran into was one of the water pump bolts snapped during removal, that took some time to drill out and forced me to finally buy a tap/die set to repair the threads.
I was fortunate enough to have a spare set of hands for most of the job to help when I would pull something in my shoulder struggling to reach over the engine with the front end supported on jack stands, and to help scrape gasket material off and to scrub parts clean.
It has been about 250km since the repair, with 5-6 heat cycles and about 5 hours of running time and I have not been able to observe the noise. In all fairness it would sometimes disappear for a couple of days before so it is possible that the noise is still there, but I am hopeful
On a side note, the thrust plate for the camshaft showed absolutely NO signs of wear, not even a circle mark from the cam touching it. I fitted the new one anyway, but I found it interesting the condition it was in.
When I got down to it my water pump had no signs of leakage, and after seeing the steps involved I really feel it isn't so bad to change later so I left the old one on the car. I will change it when it eventually fails.
The timing chain itself is specified to have a maximum of 3.125mm of play as measured at the cam gear with the crank gear locked in place. Mine had approximately 4.5mm of play, well above the service limit. With the new gears and chain fitted it had about 0.5-0.75mm of play. I'm sure it has more play than that now, new parts always need to wear in a little.
I took the opportunity to completely drain the cooling system while I was doing this work. I figured since the coolant was now just over 7 years old it was due for a change (May 10, 2005 build date).
All in all, not a difficult job, just a time consuming one. The 2 biggest pains were the crank pulley and the vibration damper. I do not understand why Dodge/Chrysler felt it necessary to make these both friction fit, but that sure makes them crappy to get off. I destroyed my 2 jaw puller trying to release the vibration damper and had to rent a 3 jaw puller to get it off, and it took a ton of fighting around with the 3 jaw puller to finally get it to hook on the crank gear due to the lack of clearance behind the teeth as the block sticks out further than the bearing cap, allowing me to get 2 of 3 jaws on securely with 1 barely on there since the jaws were a hair deeper than the clearance available.
The only other difficulty I ran into was one of the water pump bolts snapped during removal, that took some time to drill out and forced me to finally buy a tap/die set to repair the threads.
I was fortunate enough to have a spare set of hands for most of the job to help when I would pull something in my shoulder struggling to reach over the engine with the front end supported on jack stands, and to help scrape gasket material off and to scrub parts clean.
It has been about 250km since the repair, with 5-6 heat cycles and about 5 hours of running time and I have not been able to observe the noise. In all fairness it would sometimes disappear for a couple of days before so it is possible that the noise is still there, but I am hopeful
On a side note, the thrust plate for the camshaft showed absolutely NO signs of wear, not even a circle mark from the cam touching it. I fitted the new one anyway, but I found it interesting the condition it was in.
Thankfully, after quite a few miles (close to 3,000) the water pump repair has shown no issues and the rattling sound has not returned, so I am pretty confident that was my issue. However, I fully anticipate having to do the timing chain repair at some point in the future, as it sounds like this happens to all of us sooner or later with this engine.
Thanks again!
#25
07-14-2012, 06:27 PM
