Looks like I’ll be needing a power steering pump which requires an engine drop. Besides the cats/O2 sensor, and water pump. What should I do while we’re in there?
With the engine out on my car, we replaced the starter, water pump, and of course replaced the cats with high flow units mounted downstream along with relocated o2s.
You don’t have to do the water pump or starter, but I decided to replace the perfectly working units with new parts, just to avoid any issues down the road.
We also checked the timing components on the rear of the engine, but all guides looked good.
The question is, how long can you delay the job? If it has to be done right away, then you have three options to deal with the cats and o2s
- Do nothing, as long as you arent getting any errors for the cats/o2s
- Replace the cats with straight pipe or gut them. You can add high flow units downstream, if you want. You will need a tune that accounts for the cat delete.
- Check your mailbox
BTW, we replaced the entire water pump assembly, not just the pump itself. I have seen the plastic crack on a few occasions, so I wanted to make sure it was a new complete unit.
079121013N (which is the updated part)
I would recommend changing the timing chain guides while you are in there, even if they look OK. You can’t always see fatigue.
You can do the chains too if you wish, but they rarely fail. If you’re approaching 200k miles, then I would say chains for sure.
The chain guides are relatively cheap, and are totally worth it… since, if your chain or guides do have issues, it can wreck your motor rrrreal fast.
If you need p/ns, I can look them up in ETKA for you. I think they are common to the V6, V8, & V10, but don’t quote me on that.
-P