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I recently took my car into the shop because I was leaking coolant. (I thought it was tranny fluid. See my other question from a while ago to see how bad I suck at fixing cars :) I ended up putting some Stop-Leak in my coolant and haven't had a problem since- this is good because it was about 1200 to get it fixed.

What they said needed to be fixed was a replaced water pump.

Last summer (less than 12 months ago, so still under warranty) I got my water pump fixed. My receipt says "Diagnose and replace water outlet" with "4792630AA Housing-Water Outlet" as the part. What is the difference between this piece and the water pump? Should it have still been under warranty?

Thanks!

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The water pump is a mechanical pump that is one of the belt driven devices in your engine.

This pump is what circulates the coolant (when the parts are referred to for water, they mean coolant. Water hoses, water outlet, water inlet, water pump, etc are all carrying coolant).

The water outlet is simply a pipe, on one end of it is the engine block, on the other end is a hose that is connected to the radiator.

There is both a water inlet and a water outlet, these are the two points in which the coolant flows in and out of your engine block.

Since yours was a water outlet "housing" it may be the location of your thermostat. On my engine, the thermostat housing is connected to the water inlet, not outlet. I'm sure manufacturers use different locations and naming theories all the time though. The housing contains the thermostat which is a temperature sensitive device that determines whether your coolant cycles through the radiator or not.

When you've first turned on your vehicle, you want it to get up to operating temperature, so you don't yet want to be cooling the coolant through the radiator, so the thermostat keeps it blocked off until reaching a certain temperature. Once it reaches that temperature it opens up allowing the coolant to flow through the radiator to get cooled.

The water outlet could leak due to corrosion, some failure point in the metal or to a faulty gasket.

Depending on your vehicle and the shop you took it to (I'm guessing dealership), $1200 doesn't surprise me to replace it. The water pump is typically done at the same time as the timing belt because you have to take off almost all of the same parts to get in there.

I'll be changing my water pump on my car this weekend just because I'm already going to have my radiator out and hoses off. The water pump if I had purchased OEM would have been $100 instead of the $30 I'm paying for an aftermarket one so there is some difference there but most of that $1200 is probably labor.

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  • So would you say it's unlikely that they replaced the pump when they replaced the outlet?
    – corsiKa
    Jun 1, 2011 at 16:59
  • Yes, I'd trust the items marked on the paperwork (as that is what they billed you/the warranty for) more then just conversation with the tech. If it isn't on the paper, they probably didn't do it.
    – ManiacZX
    Jun 1, 2011 at 23:17

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