Water pump wear mystery ... solved

[JustaxPHX@aol.com]

This afternoon,  I stopped by the shop that works on my family's cars when I
can't or don't want to and had them look at the wear pattern on my water pump
sprocket ... their conclusion?  For whatever reason, the belt wasn't properly
seated  on the pulley and instead of meshing with the teeth on the sprocket,
it was riding on top of them.  Based on the pattern, he figures the belt was
partially offset to one side and thus each tooth on the belt was only making
contact with roughly half of each tooth on the sprocket.   And because this
also changed the way the load was being distributed between the belt and
sprocket (not to mention the fact that it would have the effect of increasing
the belt tension as well), this caused the bizarre wear pattern to form over
the past 44k miles.

He went on to suggest that the fact that it was an OEM pump is probably the
reason it's survived as long as it has since most aftermarket pumps would have
failed as a result of the additional load that was being applied.  I thought
about his analysis on the way back to the office and it seems to fit ... of
course, since I'm the person who installed the pump, this means I also have to
take responsibility for having somehow screwed things up, too.  Oh, well ...
nobody's perfect!   :^(