Speaking of oversimplification, even if you make "x" dollars per hour, you can't count that as a cost unless you actually gave up paid hours in order to make the repair. I don't know about you but I've never taken a day off work to fix my car.

 

The idea of a catastrophic water pump failure requiring me to tow my car home is extremely unlikely.

What about the fact that your "seemingly good" (new) water pump might fail earlier than the old one would have had you left it in? Can you say defect?

There are no guarantees. I'll take my chances and save the $$. Its a gamble but the odds are with me. You can't go around insuring against microrisks or you'll go broke.

 

you misunderstood the point of my examples
the first example was just figuring out what RonJ meant
the second example was as it relates to the scenario

it's not about doing it yourself or not, it's about how much valuable time you waste having to tear it apart a second time to replace the water pump as compared to how much it would have cost to just replace it with the timing belt.

and about that you've never taken off work to fix your car.
when your water pump fails while you're driving to work, are you going to miss at least some work having to go fix it or being inconvenienced by having to get an alternative method of transportation to work? Missing work could also cause other problems. I don't know your situation and am not implying anything, but some people are late to work a lot. Maybe if you're on of those people, this one last time late to work could mean getting fired, or being the guy first on the list for the next lay-off. I don't get the impression that you are late to work though, this is just an example.

Anything's possible. Say that the water pump seizes and your engine overheats.

And while I recognize that any thing's possible, the idea of the new water pump failing is "absurd." The chance of an old water pump failing is a lot higher than the new one failing.

and sheesh, it's $65. If you like working on your car as much as you say, you wouldn't mind spending $65 extra to replace another very important component of the engine that is subject to failure while it's already accessible.

 

I enjoy maintaining my car, and I also place a high value on my personal time. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. I prefer to perform relaxing car maintenance at the time of my choosing rather than deal with a sudden emergency situation, such as when an engine spills out all of its coolant and is overheating due to failure of a water pump. How do you factor this scenario into your oversimplified accountant's equation?

 

What would you say your costs are then? It doesn't make sense to say yours are higher than $265 because your time is so valuable. If that's true then your making a mistake in doing the work yourself.

Even if your time is worth $100/hour (doubtful), and you gave up 5 hours of paid work to make the repair (even more doubtful) plus the part for a total cost of $565, then your cost per dollar of coverage is 100/565 = &0.18, an order of magnitude more than homeowner's insurance.

 

Yes, but the chances that you will need to use your homeowner's insurance are much lower than the chances that something will go wrong with your car.

 

On what interval do you replace your heater core, radiator, and all the hoses in your cooling system to prevent a catastrophic failure, every 5yrs?

 

I hear you guys and know that I'm not convincing you. If my water pump explodes and I'm stranded 100 miles from home I will post my story here. But if I sell the car in 3 years with over 220k miles on it and I never had to pay to replace the water pump I'll post that story as well.

One last thought, new parts failing almost immediately after installation is not implausible at all. Sure its unlikely, but not absurd. You obviously don't work in maintenance.

Enjoy your new water pumps! I'll enjoy the money in my pocket.

 

96Cex, I'm not going to tell you how to maintain your car; that's your business. However, remember that the d16 (and most if not all other honda engines) are of the interference design; your timing belt snaps (seized water pumps seem to do that) and guess what. Your crankshaft and camshaft are now operating independently. The pistons meeting the valves head-on is not a good thing.

However, I'd like to take a quick second to quote the Cooling Systems book given to me by Wyotech:

Now are you sitting there trying to tell me that the book given to me by a highly accredited automotive school is giving us bad information? And even if the bearings are fine, what of the bearing seal? It goes bad, too.

 

clever smartass comment


Back to the point... if your water pump seizes, the timing belt will keep moving and the grooves will run into the grooves on the water pump gear and the belt WILL snap.

Remember Newton's Laws of Motion? Well, turns out they apply in real life. Who would have thought?

law of inertia "Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed."
"This law is often simplified as "A body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force."

law of reciprocal actions "For a force there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions."
"This law is often simplified into the sentence, "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.""


With the belt snapped, your crank and cam's inertia will keep them spinning, but due to their different weights and momentum, they will not continue to spin at the same rate. Catastrophic engine damage will occur.

It is you who obviously doesn't work in maintenance. Or at least not preventative maintenance. Which leads me to wonder how you came up with the idea that you should even bother to change the timing belt.



I used the word "absurd" because you used the word absurd... or so I thought. Notice how I put it in quotation marks. I either misread or you edited the post.


I already am!

Enjoy your potentially snapped timing belt and ride in the tow truck to the shop.