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2012 Subaru Forester XT Water Pump
2012 Subaru Forester XT Water Pump
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About this episode
A 2012 Subaru Forester XT faced severe overheating issues, prompting a tow to Pawlik Automotive. Initially suspected of needing head gasket replacement, the team discovered a ruptured radiator and assessed the engine's condition. They found that the original cylinder heads were intact, but the overheating was linked to an aftermarket water pump that did not flow coolant effectively. The discussion highlights the importance of using quality parts, especially in turbocharged engines, and the potential costly consequences of subpar replacements.
Topics:
overheating issues
aftermarket parts
water pump comparison
turbocharged engines
radiator failure
head gasket
engine assessment
Select text to request an explanation
Hi, it's Mark Bossard.
I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, Vancouver's best auto service
experience, and we're talking cars.
How are you doing, Bernie?
Doing very well.
So today's victim is a 2012 Subaru.
What model is this one?
The Forrester XT turbo model.
Oh, my goodness.
So what was going on with this vehicle?
The vehicle was towed to our shop.
The engine had suffered a bad overheating issue.
It was at another shop, possibly the dealer, I believe.
They wanted to change the head gaskets
and give a fairly substantially high price quote.
And the people decided they want to bring the car to us
and see what we could do with it
since we do a lot of Subaru's.
So what did you discover?
So what we found is the radiator
had suffered some severe ruptures in a couple of spots.
Looked like the radiator literally blew apart
in a couple of spots.
The engine had definitely overheated.
The complaint of the customer, they were driving it
and there was no heat inside the cabin.
So they kind of drove the car a little harder
and they found out they drove the engine
a little harder and revved it higher.
The heat would come in, but obviously at that point,
the coolant level was probably too low,
things had overheated.
I think the radiator had kind of blown up,
sprayed coolant everywhere, possibly the head gasket
had pressurized the cooling system too high
because that'll happen too.
Too much combustion pressure blew the radiator up.
But I'd say blowing up,
it wasn't like it would arrive in chunks,
but there was big splits in the tank's top and bottom.
So pretty severe.
And that's almost always or always from overheating?
Not always.
I mean, radiators, tanks will split from just old age.
They're usually plastic and so they'll split and crack.
But when they spew out like that,
there's usually too much pressure in the system
and that can be from overheating.
Sure.
Let's jump into some pictures
and we'll go into the story.
So here's our vehicle.
It was the Sporty Hood Scoop.
Provided a little bit of cool fresh air
for the turbo and the intercooler.
So we've got some pictures here of the engine out.
So I'm gonna say, uh-oh.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, so this is an engine removal job.
We weren't sure at first whether the engine
would even be salvageable
or whether we'd have to replace it with it.
Well, new is not available,
but a good used engine, if we could find one.
So we pulled the engine out and we took it apart,
you know, examined the cylinder heads,
had the cylinder heads sent off
to a machine shop for pressure testing.
The good news is the heads were not cracked
and the engine did not appear
to have been overheated too badly.
So the cylinder heads didn't need to be redone
of alfgrind and so on.
So we had all that work done.
This is the engine reassembled afterwards,
put back together.
So there's a lot of plumbing on top of this
that seems a little bit more than a normal Subaru.
What's different about this engine?
It's a turbo.
If you look on the right hand side,
you see sort of a goldish color,
rusty goldish color area.
That's where the turbo sits.
That's where the exhaust pipes attach to the turbo
and the turbo sits in that spot right there.
And I think you mentioned is twin overhead cams as well.
It's a twin overhead cam too.
If you look at the front view of the engine,
you can see the sort of two round dimples
in the timing cover.
And so that's where the camshaft, the cam gears go.
Right.
These engines use a timing belt
and they actually use the timing belt version
of this engine for quite a lot longer
than they did with the single overhead cam.
We've done a few podcasts on those.
It's a guaranteed cylinder head gasket.
It's a guaranteed needed repair
on a single overhead cam Subaru.
But the double overhead cams usually last quite a long time.
We don't do head gaskets on them very often.
They're much tougher.
I think they put a better gasket in and they don't leak.
But if you overheat it, they will.
So, so far we've replaced the radiator,
redone the head gaskets,
checked to make sure that the engine isn't wrecked
basically from overheating.
What else was it, valve grind?
Valve grind, yeah.
And we were sort of pondering why this happened.
So a little more backstory is quite recently,
prior to the vehicle overheating,
the vehicle had gone in for service
to have the timing belt replaced a bunch of other items,
including the water pump,
which is proper thing to do when you do the timing belt.
Doing a little research,
we found that using aftermarket water pumps,
some aftermarket water pumps
can cause these engines to overheat
cause they don't flow coolant as well.
So of course, one of the first things we did
when we took the engine apart
is let's have a look at the water pump.
And here's a comparison to the water pump
that was installed on the vehicle.
And if you look at the one on the left,
that's an original OEM Subaru pump.
Now you can notice a difference.
If you look at the blades, that's called the impeller,
the bladed device,
there's seven on the one on the right
and eight on the one on the left.
Obviously a slight bit of difference there.
You can also notice that the quality of the shaft
in the middle of the impeller,
the drive shaft,
it's sort of more robust on the one on the left.
It sticks out further, the one on the right,
the impeller, it's basically a shorter shaft.
I mean, they just try to make things just a little cheaper.
The shaft isn't really gonna matter to the quality of the pump,
but maybe over time it might wear out faster.
But what we know is this is the big notice
and it's hard to show it on pictures,
but where that red arrow is pointing,
there's a gap of about two millimeters
between the edge of that impeller blade
and the metal housing of the water pump.
And if you look at the OEM one,
again, hard to see in pictures,
but this gap is about half a millimeter.
So substantial difference
in terms of how this pump
is gonna flow coolant through the engine.
And having good flow is essential on this particular engine.
Using good quality parts makes a big difference
to how a car works.
So a turbocharged engine just puts more pressure
on the engine, that's its whole purpose.
It rams more air in there,
so it creates more heat, is that fair to say?
Exactly, and the turbo needs to be cooled as well
because you've got exhaust flowing through there.
So it's a source of added heat
to the cooling system as well.
So it's pretty critical.
I mean, that seven blade impeller
may not make much of a difference on a regular
type of engine, a non-turbo,
but on the turbo, you really need everything you can get
to properly pump coolant and keep the engine cool.
Plus the engine itself runs hotter
because there's horsepower and more energy to cool down.
More power, more push on the pedal.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, so pretty much a pretty expensive change
or mistake, let's call it a mistake
to have put in the wrong part in this case.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And this is a sort of area where we have to tread carefully
in the aftermarket business because if you go to a dealership,
I mean, one positive thing is most of the time,
not always they'll put in the OEM parts,
which is great because they're meant to work with the car.
I mean, sometimes they're not as good as they could be
and there are sometimes better aftermarket parts,
but generally, as an independent shop,
we always look to get the best quality parts
at the best prices and make sure that what we put in
is gonna be as good as the original.
And there are aftermarket pumps that are available
that are as good as the original.
You just have to know which brand you're buying, be picky.
It seems like a minor mistake,
but it turned out to be extremely expensive for the owner.
Yeah, expensive, stressful.
Downtime, et cetera, et cetera.
Downtime, yeah, yeah.
If you need service for your Subaru,
the experts to see are at Pollock Automotive
in Vancouver.
You can reach them online at PollockAutomotive.com.
You can book right there online,
or you can call them 604-327-7112 to book your appointment.
You have to book ahead.
They're always busy.
Pollock Automotive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Thanks so much for watching and listening.
Thanks, Bernie.
Thank you, Mark.
Thanks for watching.
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