The mystery noise in Earl Burner was the water pump. I ordered in a new Aisin pump a few weeks ago and finally installed it over the course of the afternoon yesterday. All in, it probably took 4-ish hours.
And yes, that is the same job as replacing the timing belt, as the belt has to come off to replace the water pump. Maybe it’s the familiarity of it all, but it really was not all that difficult of a job. The crankshaft bolt, usually the nightmare of anyone doing a timing belt, came right off with the special timing belt socket I used, and of course the big Milwaukee impact wrench. The other that I dreaded was reinstalling the spring for the auto-tensioner. For whatever reason, this time I removed it in about five seconds, and got it reinstalled on the first pull with the needle-nose Vise Grip.
My neighbor’s dogs are idiots. Just saying.
If it wasn’t for me dropping a few nuts, reassembly went well. The funnel I bought for refilling the radiator made short work of burping the cooling system.
The brake job on Saturday also went well, but this was on the other daily driver in the household. It had some weirdness with the brakes, and one of the front wheels had a lot of brake dust on it. As I had a spare set of rotors from El Borrego, I put those on along with new Akebono brake pads, with new and proper hardware, and with that and an oil change, I was done in 2½ hours, including 1) finding the tools, 2) doing the work and 3) cleanup.
Maybe having one job actually go well for me meant the water pump job went similarly well? 🤷♂️
I don’t know about other Honda engines, but this would be the fourth time dealing with the timing belt, three of them on this D17 engine, and it’s not really that difficult of a job with the right tools. (First time was when I replaced the cylinder head a couple of years ago, and the second when I replaced the piston rings and honed the cylinders.)
For Earl Burner’s engine, it’s an easy list of items to get through. The only shortcut I took was to lift only one side of the valve cover, vs. removing it. And that gave me the opportunity to see where the valve cover was leaking. Honestly, the recommended torque spec is not quite enough–instead, I snugged the bolts a bit more this time, cleaned off the affected areas, and we’ll see how it does.
I counted on setting aside two days to do the water pump. It took an afternoon. I’m good with that.