I was waiting for some yellow fuel lines to arrive in the mail for this 275GTS I have at my shop, when I saw a small drip of coolant on the floor under the car.

When I inspected this car a several weeks ago, I marveled at how dry it was under the car, and I think I jinxed myself! I followed a trail of coolant on the front of the engine back to the weep hole at the bottom of the water pump!

Sometimes if you ignore this little drip, the water pump could go for years without having to replace the seal, but it depends. I have found these issues rarely go away, and now was the time to fix it.

The water pump on a Colombo V-12 takes some work to access, and requires removing the hood, then the radiator, then the associated hoses. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s a lot easier to start the job knowing these parts come out, than to figure it out along with way!

I started to remove the water pump body to check how hard it would be to slide out before unbolting the main crank pulley. Once the water pump started to release, I went ahead and pulled he lower pulley so the water pump housing could be removed.

When I first took the impeller off the water pump, the carbon seal fell to the floor. Normally, this carbon ring that presses against the back of the impeller is securely sealed against the rubber water pump seal assembly.

I found this fit was loose, and probably leaking water from this area. There’s an internal spring that presses this assembly against the back of the impeller to create a seal, but this was no longer working.

We have found sometimes the spring pressure is not sufficient to make a good seal, and have had to shim the back side of this seal to push the water pump seal a little harder against the impeller. I will have to take a look at the replacement seal when it arrives in the mail to see how well attached the carbon ring is secured to the rubber seal as well!

With the radiator out of the car, decided to remove the cavallino mounted to the grille and send it out for replating. The rest of the car had fresh paint and good chrome, but the horse could use a little freshening up. Access the nuts that secured the cavallino to the grille was much easier from behind without having to remove the whole grille!