Changing the water pump is a PITA.
The manual is no help because the first step is to take the engine off the frame. Yeah right. Anyway, so here is what I learned.
1) Be sure to order new o-rings for the two water pipes that go into the pump. They do not come with the new pump assembly.
2) Do not change your engine oil two weeks before you change the water pump. Here is where the manual sucks for those of us that do not know exactly how things work. The water pump is driven from the drive shaft and has direct access to the crankcase. So, removing the pump drains the oil. I made a big mess on my garage floor with this mistake.
3) There are a lot of things in the way of the upper water pipe and it is a real PITA to get by the clutch slave cylinder assembly. The manual show the assembly off the engine because step one is remove the engine from the frame. Which a step in that procedure is to drain the oil. See comment #2 above.
Here is where I have a question. Can I remove the clutch slave cylinder assembly and move it out of the way with out having to drain clutch hydraulic fluid? I was able to get the the pump out and back in but it did not seal because I did not replace the o-rings. See #1 above. So, when I get the o-rings on Wednesday, I will need to be taking the water pipes out again and it would be nice to have the clutch slave cylinder out of the way. However, I do not want to drain the clutch system just for that.
Maybe this will help the next person that needs to change a water pump.
