Owner reviews for water pump

When I bought Aisin water pumps for some of my other Toyota/Lexus vehicles, the embossed Toyota emblem on the pump would be ground off.

I have a Saleri pump with a Victor reinz paper gasket. I did not realize during my replacement that oem isn’t paper as that’s what was already on there, and haven’t had a problem. Interested to know if they fail slowly or suddenly and if I have to add another preventative maintenance item to my list, but it’s been going strong for 30K miles.

Water pump was also renewed within a year, metal impeller, INA brand.

Get the Aisin one off rockauto, I just replaced mine with it.

You can save yourself some time and money by buying the Aisin water pump / timing belt kit on RockAuto. Don’t mess around with other ones. The parts are all the same OEM you’d get from Subaru at a fraction of the cost, except for the pump itself — but that’s a good thing because while Aisin didn’t make the pump for these, they were an OE pump maker for Subaru and the company that made the OE one for that generation (Gates) has apparently started producing crap. I don’t think Subaru even uses them anymore for their OEM pump.

19 here and no issues, but all mk7s (gti/gli/R/s3/2.0a3s etc) are known for water pump and thermostat issues.

I bought a Gates water pump off Amazon thinking I could go with a name I trust. Impeller grenaded after 5 months and less than 6k driven.

Best was a factory 944 Turbo water pump, bought from Porsche. It was a raw casting. No machining work at all.

Like others have suggested, either get an OEM or Aisin water pump or be prepared to make this an annual event.

I had a crack in my water pump and my car was leaking coolant slowly and then one day very quickly lol.