Water Pump Carnage

[Russianblue]

I'm starting another thread here to go along with my Head Gasket thread but this topic deserves its own space.

Last night after removing the Jesus bolt (to change broken lower timing chain guide) I found what has probably caused all this mess and that the entire head gasket replacement MAY not have been necessary.

Obviously for an overheating car, the water pump should have been at the very top of the list of things checked. Because it was such a requisite check, I relied on TWO different auto shops to tell me that the water pump was not the problem. I would normally would have assessed this myself but the car had to be towed and I didn't have access to it.

One (a very well known BMW tuner shop in town) had the car for a week and I got on the phone with the acutal service tech several times. I now assert that he lied straight to my face about what he had checked/observed. In any case, the end assessment was 'bad head gasket', notwithstanding his direct quote "you have the metal impeller water pump so I know it's not that".

Ultimately, whoever the fault goes to...we all missed the forest for the trees.

From what I have researched, most of the stories you hear about BMW water pumps with plastic impellers exploding refer to the molded plastic models in the early 2000's. But I think BMW switched to PPS Composite a long time ago. So the Genuine BMW Water pump (Saleri I believe) with a composite impeller is considered perfectly robust and and much more reliable.

Here's the Saleri I just pulled out with 18k miles on it. Granted, the car did 'overheat' at one point but I just can't IMAGINE what would cause this type of destruction. Even if there were a manufacturing defect, how does the wheel get sheared into two halves like this?

Further and perhaps more worriesome, I have to figure out how to locate and remove the plastic chips that are floating around in the cooling system. Anybody got experience with that?