When I first joined I bit into the worry of water pump failure.

Now, 9 years later, the X5 is still on the original water pump. I have a GMP composite impeller pump sitting in my apartment, but won't change it until the one on the vehicle fails.

Nothing worse than being stranded on the road. When the OE crapped at 50-55'ish, it was a 95+ degree day, and weather related....more motorist calls, it took about 5 hrs if I recall for a tow. Was not pleasant.

With that said, the current WP has 50K on it already or less (can't recall if I touched it during another job when I was in the vicinity). Springs in the air, the X is the wifey's with 2 toddlers in the rear.

So it's going to boil down to reactive or proactive stance. Part is cheap. Hell, cheaper than the HP Power Steering Hose....Just tallying the list

I think being proactive is checking for shaft play on the water pump every year, as was mentioned previously in this thread. It is not replacing it every 50k miles as that is throwing money away.

Can xxx part fail and leave you stranded? Yes, many xxx parts can. Do you replace every xxx part on the vehicle on a time interval to prevent that from happening? No, you'll run yourself broke.

Or everything will work as designed :rofl:

^x2 :D

Then clearly everything on my X5 doesn't work because I haven't replaced it in the last 13 years/140k miles...