Sometimes our older cars give us little puzzles to figure out. Take this 2007 Chevy van, for example. Its owner had brought it in because it had been leaking water, even though there was no sign of a leakage when we got it up on our lift. In fact, the engine looked quite dry. Car engines have weep holes built in, which are designed to leak water slowly so you can tell when it's time to replace the water pump. But in this case, as soon as a little bit of pressure is applied to the engine, the water started gushing like a faucet.
The video is actually pretty crazy to see – the water comes out so quickly and full, not to mention all of a sudden. Check out the video to see what we had to do to find the source of the issue for this customer, and how obvious it is that this van's water pump is totally broken.
Transcript:
Today we're looking at a 2007 Chevy van that came in with a water leak, and as we're looking at it from underneath right now you actually don't see any leaks, it's pretty dry. But as soon as you put a little pressure on the system it will start to leak and pour water everywhere. And that's coming out of an area called a weep hole, and that weep hole is designed to cover the bearing. And it's designed to start actually leaking slowly so you can determine when the water pump needs to be replaced. So we can get a light up there, you can't quite see the hole but you can see now how it just starts coming out like a sieve. And that is how a water pump fails.