Spent yesterday replacing my water pump, tensioner, idler, timing belt, and radiator hoses on a 1996 Eagle Vision TSI (3.5L V6, 57K miles). Everything went back together pretty well and I tested for no leaks by filling with water. Since everything looked good, I filled with antifreeze and drove today. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had a small sporadic leak coming from the pump area.
I disassembled everything this morning and ran the engine with the timing cover, fans, and serpentine belt removes to see what was happening. I discovered that the leak was coming from the area directly behind the water pump. I'm not exactly sure what this housing is called, but I will call it the water pump/engine front housing. This then required removal of the passenger side cam sprocket and some other bolts to get this fairly large housing off. When I had it off, I verified that there was corrosion on both the engine block front and the alloy housing verifying this had been leaking for some time. There were a couple of small flat round rubber gaskets on either side of the pump orifice which had yet another larger round gasket.
I cleaned everything up pretty well and intend to pick up the gaskets at the dealer parts counter tomorrow. I have two questions:
- Should I also use RTV to hold the gaskets in place and improve the seal when I replace these 3 housing gaskets? (Seems to me that a thin coating of blue RTV might help to fill in some of the small pits that I was not able to wire brush out.)
- Can someone who has the FSM provide me with the bolt torque requirements for re-assembly? There are several size bolt heads (10mm, 13mm, 15mm, 18mm cam sprocket).
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and information. It appears that the pump itself was not the source of this leak as I had presumed (but I will replace the pump anyway).
Bob
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