90q Various pumps

[Andrei Kogan <abk@phy.duke.edu>]

Dear friends, 

Thank you for your comments regarding my Idler pulley post. I may have
misled some of you accidentally, by saying in my second post regarding the
timing belt job that I didn't replace the water pump. You see, I did the
timing belt and the water pump in October, and at that time foolishly left
the old idler pulley in place, so it went bad on me and now I went in there
the second time and did the idler pulley. The water pump and the belt have
less than 3,000 miles on them, so I left them both in there. I am obviously
a bit concerned about the water pump seal, but I hope that because it is
really quite fresh it hopefully hasn't yet welded itself to the block. The
first time, I did a really careful job cleaning the block surface, greasing
the seal etc. On Tuesday, the pump separated itself from the block on its
own without any effort on my side. I decided I'll take a risk of having to
do the job the third time if it does develop a leak instead of cancelling
my trip plans. The ip went bad very close to my departure day ( tomorrow!),
the dealer here *doesn't* stock *anything*, seems like, so I couldn't even
get the damn o-ring before the weekend even if I wanted to change it.

I think that water pump that I put in is a little noisy (made by BECK, I
think) , it makes a bit of *dry* sound at about  1800 rpm ( I have been
hearing it from the day I put it in, so I'm assuming it's the pump),
hopefully it doesn't imply it's faulty. Any experience getting a parts
supplier pay for a valve job? (oops, bad joke there)

Now, to the Fuel pump:
Phil Payne, Dan Hussey, Steven Hill, Andrew Pawlisz and others who sent me
your comments --- thank you very much. Basically the concensus is that it
is unlikely to fail *right away* until the sound starts wavering, which I
don't think is happening on my car. 

One more point, a 20 min search of the Bentley this morning convinced me
that 90quattros only have one fuel pump, that is, no aux pump in the gas
tank. Anyone can verify that?

Bottomline, armed with our AAA gold card, off we go to Atlanta tomorrow...

I'll have my laptop with me, so if that fuel pump does go bad in some
deserted place in Georgia I'll be able to get in touch with you all!

Andrei