The first thing you need is to gather the right selection of tools.
I used:
Needle nose pliers
Flat screw driver
15 mm deep socket with 3/8" drive ratchet
10 mm shallow and deep sockets, 3/8" drive
2" extension for 3/8" drive
3/8" swivel socket
Shallow bucket
1/4" drive ratchet with 2" extension
1/4" drive 8 mm shallow socket
Torque Wrench
Anti Seize
Not enough brake clean
Ramps made from 2" x 12" boards
It's not necessary but I drove my car up on some home made ramps. This just gave a little more room to get to the radiator drain plug.
1. Start draining the radiator because this takes a loooong time. I bet it took almost an hour and a half to drain because it just kept dribbling out. I think it took this long because the engine was cold and the thermostat was shut and the engine has to drain through the little pin hole in the thermostat. Anyway, onto the instructions. First thing (with a cold engine) remove the cap on the surge tank. Now take the 1/4" drive with the 2" extension and put it in the petcock (no I didn't make this name up
). Turn it counter clockwise a quarter turn. I found it almost turned all the way then on the last 16th of a turn it popped out all the way. Don't force it though, these things are known to break. You can pull out on the petcock to help it as you are turning it.
2. Remove the air bridge. Mine is some unit I've never seen and is held on with worm gear clamps. I used the 8mm socket on the worm gear drives as it is easier than the flat blade screw driver. Even if your air bridge is different, I'm sure this isn't too difficult for anyone to do so, lets move on and assume the radiator is done draining. Tighten the petcock a quarter turn back to it's original position.
Picture of the electrical connection to remove on the air bridge
3. Once the air bridge is removed, take some pictures of how the belt is routed. Then take your 15 mm deep socket and place it on the bolt for the tensioner pulley. Push it towards the drivers side to give the belt some slack. I found the belt still pretty tight and had to peel it off the pulley. The deep socket allows the belt to be pulled off the tensioner without getting in the way like a wrench would.
Just let the belt drop down, don't bother taking it out as it is not necessary and you'll have to just restring the thing.
4. Have a look at how the hose clamps are aligned. Mine were pretty much in perfect position. I just put the pliers on either side of the clamp and squeezed them open. Using one hand on the pliers and one hand on the bottom of the clamp, I guided the clamps up the hoses to get them out of the way.
There are four hoses to remove: Upper radiator hose, lower radiator hose, and two smaller heater hoses. Once the clamps are moved, I found it actually pretty easy to remove the hoses.
5. Removing the bolts for the water pump. There are six bolts holding on the water pump. Before I even started loosening them, I took a sharpie and numbered the bolts from 1 to 6 so I could but them back in the same holes. Using the 10 mm shallow socket with 2" extension, I cracked the three bolts on the passenger side as they were easy to get to. Then I cracked the top and bottom bolt on the drivers side using the deep 10 mm socket. For the center bolt on the driver's side the ABS unit is in the way to use the ratchet with a socket so your options are to use a swivel socket or use an adjustable gear drive wrench which I used....however, now I probably would have just used the swivel socket.
Picture of the three bolts on the passenger side.
Picture of the three bolts on the drives side. Bolt #5 will not come out as the ABS unit is in the way so it will just come out with the water pump.
(I have new belts, they'll be on in the Spring)
With all the bolts cracked, I now started taking them out all the way. They looked like crap! Two were clean, the other 4 were covered in black crap. As I didn't have a wire brush, I just cleaned them as best I could with brake clean and a cloth. The threads however, were in good condition.
