Water pump AISIN or Pierburg

The all metal pierburg water pumps last longer than the plastic ones.

I'd recommend looking at an upgraded Pierburg water pump. None of the plastic bits & will save you from replacing it again in a few years.

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.

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.

You should use Aisin or OEM water pumps.

Have installed many pierburg Full alum cast pumps as well with good results. The Pierburgs are made in china FYI

New parts should be in tomorrow (Pierburg pump). I'll update again after everything is back in! As a small detail, I noticed a brown seal-looking thing stuck in the impeller of the water pump (Continental, BMW logo. Probably factory) I am thinking the pump internally failed while spinning, and the internals took the hit and self-destructed. Hence the total BSD failure code. Just a guess though.

Bought an Aisin waterpump off ebay and installed during the swap but it is making an awful racket and has me concerned it is a fake or otherwise defective out the box. Not sure how to share a video here but it sounds like a loud buzzing and i dont remember the old waterpump making that noise.

I would get a vdo/continental water pump. I’ve bought the all aluminum water pump from pierburg and it died in about 800 miles.