Originally Posted by dschauer

Dealer called yesterday to say that it is a water pump bearing failure and that they just happened to have one available (obviously I'm not the only one with this problem) so it is being installed. The more I dwell on this the more I want to know what possible damage or excessive wear occurred as a result.

Assume the water pump likely never worked properly therefore for 1,500 miles the coolant didn’t circulate properly. There were no leaks (never saw one drop on garage floor or while on lift) so the 3 liters of coolant likely boiled off. This would seem to explain why there was no prior warning (only warning was the Stop Engine Immediately signal) assuming the coolant temperature sensor must be on the ‘cold’ side of the water pump.

So question is how could the coolant boil off in a pressurized system and if it wasn’t pressurized because the pump didn’t work how hot did the coolant get to cause it to boil off? How can we ever know how hot the engine actually got. Assume that engine oil would have been an fairly effective coolant. Should the oil be changed and tested to see if it degraded because of heat?

Obviously the cooling system is there for a reason so wouldn’t the lack of cooling likely cause some damage?

Am I over thinking this? Should I be concerned?

Originally Posted by aCayenneFan

Send a sample of the oil off to Blackstone for analysis. If the test results come back showing heat damage, then you could have a reasonable basis to worry about engine damage. Since you are still going through break-in, excessive wear particles are less of a concern. Realistically, I doubt there will be any damage since you stopped the engine shortly after the message appeared.

Originally Posted by dschauer

Picked up my car on Saturday. They replaced the water pump after performing pressure test of system. Drained coolant and vacuum filled new coolant. Asked to look at old water pump but told they could not find it. What they did explain is that the pump itself was operating but that a seal had failed allowing coolant to drip out of the weep hole. Originally didn't make sense to me since (no evidence on garage floor but when I got the car home and put it on the lift there was plenty of evidence that coolant had leaked out of the area of the pump. There is nothing that would have kept coolant from leaking onto the garage floor so can only assume that it was a slow leak that burned off.

I've cleaned up the area and plan to monitor for any new problems. Dealer told me that they have had a number of issues with the water pumps and claimed they'd installed a 4th one on a 997 due to repeated failures of the same seal.

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions.

Originally Posted by dschauer

Picked up my car on Saturday. They replaced the water pump after performing pressure test of system. Drained coolant and vacuum filled new coolant. Asked to look at old water pump but told they could not find it. What they did explain is that the pump itself was operating but that a seal had failed allowing coolant to drip out of the weep hole. Originally didn't make sense to me since (no evidence on garage floor but when I got the car home and put it on the lift there was plenty of evidence that coolant had leaked out of the area of the pump. There is nothing that would have kept coolant from leaking onto the garage floor so can only assume that it was a slow leak that burned off.

I've cleaned up the area and plan to monitor for any new problems. Dealer told me that they have had a number of issues with the water pumps and claimed they'd installed a 4th one on a 997 due to repeated failures of the same seal.

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions.