Water pump Gates or OEM Volkswagen

With these cars, it\u2019s less so staying on top of the regular service items from the dealer - and more so staying educated on all the little unspoken chickenshit maintenance items that VW doesn\u2019t outwardly talk about.

I actually just changed the pump on my 2018. With the pump/thermostat assembly, and a collection of specific tools, it cost me ~$900. I was quoted 2k by a dealer so I saved a good chunk of change. All-in-all the job is straightforward, save plenty of headache with disconnecting hoses and wire clips.

I put a gates on my 2005 in August. No issues so far.

My 17 S is sitting at 108k. Only issues I\u2019ve had outside of normal maintenance has been a water pump at 102k and cam magnets at 103k. It\u2019s been the model of reliability and its nearly still as tight as it was when new.

No problems other than the water pump

Welcome to the club of probably needing to replace your water pump & thermostat housing \ud83e\udee1

During COVID, that water pump was on backorder from Ford so I used one from Gates. I guess Gates had a bad batch and 2 of their's failed in the span of less than a year.

The only one to really avoid out of the 5 choices on Rockauto is the Gates, because of the cheap stamped impeller. Personally, I would not go with an aluminum pump body in this application, but that's just my opinion after working on vehicles for a living for 45+ years.

I used a Gates pump the first time and it leaked. I uninstalled it, cleaned everything up, regreased all the seals, and reinstalled it it... still leaked. Turns out the Gates water pumps for the ecodiesel are just garbage.

I have Gates start leaking within 10k of installation.