99 z3 2.8l roadster

[Sijray21]

so i noticed a drop or two of coolant near the front of the engine the other day and i figured the water pump was on its way as it appeared to be coming from there. I already anticipated this happening and had the water pump, thermostat, hoses, and hardware in the garage.

Taking apart the stuff was pretty straight forward. the water pump and thermostat came off without much issue. draining the block of coolant was a terrible mess. i had a form-a-flow set-up, but that was utterly useless; stupid purchase.



The water pump i removed had some old gasket stuff stuck in one of the fan blades and the gasket and area around there seemed to have been exposed to a coolant leak sealer thing (very crusty). The thermostat has some signs of this as well, but not nearly as bad as the water pump. Even with the metal water pump pulley being pretty dinged up i was planning on reusing it since a plastic one came in the kit i bought, but the metal one had issues fitting flush on the pump i installed. Instead of figuring that out I just used the new plastic one; i'll keep the metal one as a spare.



Refilling and burping/bleeding the system has been a shit-show. I have the Bentley and watched several videos online about refilling and bleeding the cooling system in BMWs, but the damn thing kept overflowing despite me following the instructions... The instructions basically said to keep it running at idle at operating temperature and slowly fill the reservoir with the cap and bleed screw open, however when i did this it just kept overflowing... i probably pissed away half the available coolant doing this. I finally shut the engine off when i saw the temp needle start to tick up to the red. i let it cool down a bit and saw that the reservoir was empty. I did my normal procedure when i did this on my hondas where i just ran it, let it cool, refilled, repeat. Seems to be fine now, getting heat in the cabin, and i need to pick up just a little more coolant to top it off.

The worst thing to happen during the whole ordeal was dropping the bleeder screw into the cavity under the brake booster. The hardlines for the brakes, the booster, and the fusebox prevented me from reaching down there and with the bleeder screw being plastic i couldn't use my magnetic snake... I had to look through all my tools and thankfully RJ left his hose clamp pliers (the ones with a cable and long attachment) and i was able to move the thing with a few extensions into a position where i could attempt to pinch it with the pliers... Makes me want to get a flex 3-prong grabber from somewhere...

so no leaks so far, but i need to double check after i get more coolant and top it off tomorrow.