Water pump OEM Audi or GRAF

the aux water pump is leaking you can do it without taking the intake manifold off thru the driver side rear if the engine shouldnt cost you more than 200 when your all done

Further, the metal unit (Graf) had a sort of reptile-skin texture to the impeller fins, no doubt a product of the casting process. I spent some time with a dremel polishing the fins (because that's how I roll ) to get them as smooth as the plastic ones being replaced.

I went with the Graf in my 95 passat glx. The graf has a cast iron impeller wheel. The stock one that was in there was plastic and some fins broke off when the pump failed

My OEM plastic one broke and so did the metal-impeller Graf I replaced it with. They Graf seized up and leaked whereas the OEM plastic one just leaked.

Not true. The maintenance schedule for the belt is 105,000 miles. Many of the pumps with plastic impellers fail before that. The plastic composite seems to age and become brittle after 70k or 80k miles--some sooner and some later. But they do fail. This is what happens: