Chrysler Water Pump Failure

If the seal springs a leak, does the coolant go into the engine, or onto the ground?

do you think that these engines were purposely designed to fail?

No, my experience with Chrysler leads me to believe that they often push the design envelope and try things that turn out to be less than feasible over the long haul. Chrysler history is full of innovation, some wildly successful and some that made one want to say "WFT were they thinking?".

IMO, it's not a bad idea to want to find a way to better protect an engine accessory better than in past designs. Unfortunately, I believe they thought that by better protecting the water pump they might reduce problems with the pump, but they did not adequately prepare for the inevitable failure of seals.

FWIW, Hooker

Reminds me of the early nineties Chrysler mini-van V-6 3.0L. (I think other models used the same engine as well.) Those had a nasty habit of breaking off the rocker arm bearing caps because either there wasn't enough material to take the tension or the castings had excessive porosity or inclusions that compromised the strength.

Fortunately, you could fix the head in the vehicle by drilling the cap bolt hole deeper into the head, heli-coil the hole and use a longer grade 8 or better bolt and just "sandwich" the broken piece of head between the cap and the rest of the head. Use lots of grease covered (clean) rags to catch the chips. It's amazing how much better the engine runs when all the valves open and close like they should.

Other than saving a few pennies, I cannot fathom why Chrysler just didn't use longer bolts to start with? I have to believe the engineers didn't like the approach but the bean counters won.

Deeper means longer drilling and tapping stroke and, therefore, a longer cycle time for those two operations. Plus more tool wear per drill and tap operation, and greater likelihood of tool breakage.

Miniscule time for a single block but when you're trying to crank out several thousand blocks a day, it all adds up to a lower throughput per shift.

Doesn't make it right but that's the mindset in the engine plants. Automation, deadlines and inadequate prototype testing often result in these "pesky" problems. When I worked in the Chrysler engine plants the average return rate of failed engines under warranty averaged between 35-40%. Certainly not ideal but grudgingly acceptable to the brass considering volume produced.

I personally experienced two failures of Mitsubishi designed engines while under warranty in two consecutive leased Dodges. That pretty much put me off Chrysler products. I'd take a Viper, though.

Hooker

That's true, I forgot those were Mitsubishi engines. I understand how we got there, it's just too bad the failure rate is considered acceptable for the bottom line.

I'm with you on the Viper though. Even an unreliable Viper would be wicked fun at least part of the time.

Personally, I'm a long-time fan of V-dubs. They have generally done pretty well with most of their engine designs, particulary the in-line four. They have had some disasters as well but their bread-and-butter engine is pretty much bullet-proof. My wife and I just gave our son our '87 Jetta with over 250K miles. The only thing that engine ever got were oil changes every 5K miles, spark plugs, cap and rotor every 100K miles. He just replaced the OEM alternator although it hadn't failed, the bearings were just looser than you might like. And with the European spec exhaust manifold to replace the toilet-bowl manifold, with twin down-pipes and a 2.25 inch SS exhaust (Tectonics Tuning) it has pretty nice scoot for the old GX 8V motor.

chysler as blamed failed engines for everything under the sun except for there own faulty designs. it's almost impossible to have the repair work done under warrenty.