Water pump is slightly goosed so it's gonna need replacing but only needs topping up every few weeks a little, so no massive panic or hurry. The indy who kindly checked it over spotted it straight away and didn't charge us, but they obviously referred to books to find out how to fix this particular model (2008 18tsi) and very apologetically, bless 'em, said they thought it would be better with a specialist or a dealer and could be looking at £750 cos they seemed to think there was some sort of spindle into the block or something!

 

Anyway, dealer's just got back to me with a price of £278, which I'm happy with, considering the above, but it seems a world apart from what the indy said.

 

Anyone else had it done on this model or another chain driven car, and what did they pay or get quoted?

Strange. Two dealers have given a similar quote (within £15 of each other),... but the independents I've asked to do the work have quoted just over £350 and £600! They're giving times of 2.5 hours & 5.5 hours to get the job done, whereas the dealers are both saying it's an hours work.

 

Booked in to the dealers, for obvious reasons, but can I presume they're not then gonna go, 'oh, it took a lot longer than we though... that'll be £800, thanks!!' are they? The price quoted is the price charged, correct? Never had work at a dealer out of warranty so don't know how funny they can be if they get it wrong. :(

Price quoted should be priced charged. I had a dealer make an error on a quote for me and they honoured it because they said that is what was quoted.

If it is the same design as the 2010+ 1.8TSI (CDAA) & VRS (CCZA) then it sounds very cheap. The pump itself (assuming genuine VWAG) with housing, thermostat etc is about £130 and it's a lot of time and effort getting the manifold off to access everything and do a decent job. I have read that (some?) dealers replace from underneath with the manifold in place, which was pointed to by some forums as being the reason so many Golf & Audi water pumps were replaced under warranty only to leak again within a short time. Even if they do this I still can't see it only being ~1hr labour!

On checking, one dealer said they have it as 2.6 hours, but the pump is 120ish, let alone the ancillary bits, so how can that add up to under £300?!

And that's two dealers with that price, not one.

Pump is xxx, but you can do an exchange so buying it cheaper.

Is it driven off the cambelt as if so, you might as well get a new cambelt, aux belt and the lot done at the same time.

Stuff leaking on perishable belts is never great and it snapping will write off your engine.

If this is the same setup as the later CDAA or CCZA engines, then there is no cambelt, it is camchain. The water pump has it's own tiny little drive belt attached to a balancing shaft at the front of the block. It's hidden right up under the inlet manifold and it is a fairly involved job to get to it - I changed my (leaking) pump at the same time I cleaned the inlet valves.

 

Most of the problems seem to be with the plastic housing rather than the pump itself and with it such a pig to get to I definitely wouldn't entertain a third party part or anything refurbished. I don't believe VW will exchange these (TSI waterpump+housing+thermostat) for new units, but I'm happy to be wrong.

Not sure if it's got that separate belt but the engine is a bzb and therefore chain driven. Definitely won't get an aftermarket unit, that was never an issue for me, but it's booked in with the dealer now so I'll let them crack on. They confirmed today they're listing it as two hours so sort of adds up now. Hey ho