Please help!!! Haven't heard from anyone on this issue. It's a 2002. I'm not auto repair savvy, just want to make sure I understand the repair. Daughter's in college and water pump in her 2.0L went out. Shops want close to $600 to repair. To replace waterpump requires timing belt removal? I've had several cars that drive belts were all that needed to be removed to fix. Can someone please advise me on this. I'm surprised if this is true. Read through many of the postings and didn't find any info. Thanks for your immediate help.

Stratus Dad...

 

Removal of the timing belt cover(s) and belt is necessary for this repair. Before you get to that the coolant reservoir and inner fender skirt need to come out. And of course the drive belt needs to come off. $600 may seem high to replace a water pump but when you consider where that pump is buried and how much stuff you have to take off to get to it, it's about right.

 

Ya, he's right about the inner fender skirt, coolant reservoir and the timing belt cover. You also need to remove the timming belt were it attaches to the pulley on the water pump. I would say that once your down there, you might as well replace the timming belt, because theres no sense in doing the job twice since you basically do a timming belt job to get the pump off. But here your belt might actualy not need replacing since the car is only 5 years old. Which makes me wonder what happened to the water pump. Anyways, I didthe timming belt my self on my Strat, which has a 2.4. This job took mea little over 12 hours.