The good is it only took 4 hours. But man what a PITA. They could not make that one much more difficult if they tried. The people at Mini should consider putting three holes in the frame rail so you can get at the pulley thing that drives the water pump. If they did that it would be a 1-2 hour job.
Heck, I did a thermostat in one the other week and that sucked! I can only imagine how crappy a water pump is!
The R53 isn't much better - it's driven off the back-side of the supercharger. The t-stat is equally buried.
Of course, difficult access is why water pumps on TDI's are replaced as maintenance items - they're driven off the timing belt, so you can't really replace the pump without doing a TB job.
You'll need to log in to post.
