my water pump is squeaking!

[treed2@u.washington.edu (T. Reed)]

Hey all,

I've been having some annoying belt noise problems and I made some
progress with them today by replacing the pulley bolts with ones of the
correct length (so that they don't need washers) to center the
pulley on the hub correctly. I also changed the shimming on my hacksaw
non-a/c alternator bracket to better align the pulleys.

However, when I had all the pulleys off I turned all the accessories by
hand to make sure their bearings were good. Everything got a clean bill of
health except for the water pump. I put in a new (used) water pump with
the 2.0 about 1000 miles ago. It didn't make any noise out of the car
before I put it in..

Now, when I turn the hub on the water pump by hand it makes a squeaking
noise (I assume from the seal).. turning it one direction (I believe
it is the direction opposite to which the engine rotates) makes it much
worse/louder than the other. It's not a continuous noise, however. In
fact, when the engine is driving the pump by belt the noise manifests
itself as a loud, high pitched "eeep!" type noise about 3 times a second.
I can put my ear up to the muffler and still hear it over the exhaust.

Needless to say, this is really annoying.

The water pump pulley is the 2-part one with the (nylon?) bearing for the
inner pulley. I spun the pulley off the car and the bearing seems to be
fine except for a little bit of play side-to-side.

I have no water leaks and no cooling problems (except maybe too much
cooling - with this low temp thermo my car almost never hits the led)

What could this be? A failing seal? A seal needing lubrication (can I
squirt some silicone on it and quiet it down)? Normal? (although it's too
damn annoying to be normal)

When I first fired up the car after working on the belts the noise wasn't
there.. but after a minute or so the chirping set in again. The engine
sounded so healthy without the belt noise and the chirping.. but to my
dismay it's not that way any more.

Anybody have any ideas at all for what's going on here or how to fix it?

Of course I'd love to avoid pulling the water pump and putting in a new
one (again) but if this thing drives me nutty enough I might do just
that..

Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions..

-Toby


--
'87 2.0l 16v