John S's Journal

It’s so annoying. First it was a small leak around the gasket. Drained the radiator and waited for Amazon to ship some Toyota FIPG 103. Cleaned everything up and reinstalled with the new sealant and waited a day before adding coolant. Success, or so I thought. Found a small tear in the short hose. Waited for BPNW to send me a new silicone hose. Didn’t have to drain much coolant to reinstall with the new hose. Fired it up and let it come up to temperature. Damn, now I can see coolant again. This time it’s coming out of the weep hole and this pump is almost brand new.
It’s one that I had Basil source when I picked up the car in the Fall of 2020 and started to get the car back on the road. It didn’t leak initially when I first got it running back then. Since then it’s been sitting idle until I reinstalled the engine and gearbox just recently. I spent some time going through the archived posts only to read that some pumps need to spin dry for a short period to seat the seal. Never heard of that in my lifetime of working on cars so now I’m wondering what the next step might be. I still have to do a couple things before I insure the car and start driving but I’m tempted to let it go for now to see if it will seal on its own.

Re-bled the front brakes and discover the right hard line to flex hose connection was not as tight as it needed to be. Just a hint of moisture at the connection clued me in to that. I’m going to re-bleed the rears next and make sure they are all good to go as the brakes are better but not as good as I think they should be. The front ones are good now though. Took the opportunity to grease up the front end while I was at it and bent the caliper lock tabs over too. Even though I had used LockTite on the caliper bolts, I figured it couldn’t hurt to bend the tabs over.

Last but not least, I tightened up the rear muffler clamp that I found loose. The exhaust note sounded different and a couple of heat cycles showed it to be leaking a bit around the rear muffler inlet.

Waiting for some warmer weather to finish the front valance work that I started too long ago. Winter sucks a lot of motivation to do some of these small jobs that need to be done. And big jobs as well, like the new carpet install that is waiting in the wings.

Thursday

Decided to order a new water pump so I can end the leaks once and for all. Should be here on Monday. Not looking forward to pulling everything back off and scraping all of that Toyota FIPG sealant off.

Got the back brakes bled again. I was lazy when I put the front suspension back together and just bled the front calipers since I hadn’t disturbed the rear brakes. Got the rest of the air out of the system and the pedal is firmer now. Might have to give the rear adjusters a turn in but we’ll see after I get the water pump swapped out and get the car insured so that I can road test it.