Water pump Gates or OEM FORD

Just buy the wole WP+ housing as an assembly. Who cares if it's OEM. I install Gates WP/Timing belt kits on many other cars and they are excellent. Better than OEM.

Gates is the brand everyone get and refers to for the water pump. Good quality and cheap enough. If you can't get gates. There are two main impeller designs. Cast and sheet metal tabs. Supposedly the cast impeller design performs better. So if you're ordering from a generic parts store, make sure it's the cast impeller design (but the sheet metal design works just fine).

Last time I got a new Gates water pump (made in china) the flange position on the shaft was a little different than my old one but it was close enough.

Pretty sure this is the motor that needs the engine dropped to do waterpump and timing components. Bad bad design

The 3.5 5th generation Explorer has an internal water pump driven by the timing chain. It’s an enormous pain to change requiring significant disassembly (nearly 12 hours of labor) and generally includes replacing the timing chain in the process since you’re already in there, plus when it fails it can easily mix the coolant with the oil and destroy the engine, all that’s keeping them apart is a little seal.

Gates waterpump broke in 2, the base is still mated to the block with all the bolts in-tact

Gates water pumps have been going downhill. I bought one for a Toyota Rav4 v6 and it started leaking after two months of service.

The new Gates water pump installed last month started leaking. I have only driven around 1000km. Does this happen a lot for Gates pumps?

Years ago I would use the Gates kit on my 03 Evo with no issue, but a few years back I had a failure (from a different component) after 19k miles and the Gates pump was weeping when I removed it. The shop I use also doesn’t recommend them either so I go OEM for the water pump anymore.

water pump failed at 101,000. Shop replaced under warranty. That next one failed at 110,000. Took a little work since shop changed owners but got the the water pump replaced at no cost. Shop said the two bad ones were Gates