How do you change the water pump on a 1985 6.2L diesel Suburban?

Answer 1

If you don't know how to change a water pump on a 350 chevy, refer to those instructions for the basics.

In addition, what makes this job a real pain is you have to remove the timing cover, which involves removing some of the accessory bracketry depending on your accessories. There are bolts attaching the water pump that are attached from the back of the cover. By my memory, I believe that there are 4. The number is irrelevent, however.

I've done this job once already and it looks like I have to do the job again on a different motor.

It will be handy during reassembly to have a helper to help position the timiing cover when reattaching as it is rather awkward to get into position. When I do it again, I'm going to have somebody hold the plate from the top with the permatex applied so I can line it up from the bottom and start the first couple of bolts.

FYI, the reason I stumbled onto this is I'm looking to see if I can get a military version of the water pump that may have a higher flow. I don't want to do this job twice and now I'm using my suburban for towing my camper 700 miles twice a year with some hill climbs so I could use the extra flow but don't want to convert to the serpentine system. I just added that so that maybe you could do a little checking for yourself. You don't want to change the pump twice, but if it was working good for you before, then a new one should work fine as well.

Another thing to consider given the pain this job is that a new one is only about another 30 bucks more the last time I checked.