<p>I bought a certified pre-owned 2003 Toyota Camry from a dealer in 2008 with around 68K miles on it. So I know that at least in 2008, Toyota certified its used cars up to at least five years old.</p>
<p>Oh, and BCEagle, thanks for the info about the timing chain on 4-cyl. Camry’s! I had no idea, and kept wondering when the timing belt would need to be replaced. Before getting the 2003 Camry, I had a 1994 one and had to have the timing belt replaced at least twice–as others have said, not cheap!</p>
<p>This is a 2009 Scion. This make is known for reliability and the car is in beautiful condition. They say it has a chain, not a belt. I have an older model with 90K and have never done anything but brakes. It’s had two owners. The water pump was replaced at the dealership after they took it as a trade-in. The salesman said it could have been precautionary because of “seepage”. I assume the owner sold it because he did not want to pay to have the waterpump replaced but it has unusually nice options compared to others so I wouldn’t think they would part with it easily if that was the only issue. The dealership is willing to certify it for me if I want that. I’m trying to decide whether it could be a lemon.</p>
<p>Why not ask the dealer if you can contact the previous owner?</p>
<p>buying a used car is always risky. you never know and cannot second guess why this car is on the market. If in doubt, just skip this one and move on. To me, a new water pump is a good thing as it will not be breaking down any time sooner. However, if you have other concerns, buy a different car.</p>
<p>We replace our own water pumps & fan belts.
Not expensive or difficult & certainly not something to sell an otherwise good car over.</p>
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<p>Buying anything is risky. But I don’t think there’s necessarily great risk in buying a used car. The most troublesome car I’ve ever had was one that I bought new: a 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan so bad that Chrysler bought it back from me 30 months later. (I had that van 2.5 years; I drove it only 28,000 miles. But in that time, I had 16 different warranty-covered repairs–excluding routine maintenance–on 13 different parts of the van. By the time Chrysler took it back, I was on a first-name basis with service advisors in three different dealerships. Basically, I just used it to get back and forth between my house dealerships for repairs.)</p>
<p>I don’t think buying a late-model used car from a dealership is much riskier than buying a new car or a house or anything else that costs a lot of money.</p>
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<p>Of course the rural high mileage car may actually be in better condition than the city low mileage car, since city miles are much harder on the car than highway miles.</p>
<p>A reasonable proxy for how hard or gentle your driving is: is your fuel economy better or worse than that reported on [Fuelly</a> | Share and Compare Your MPG](<a href=“http://www.fuelly.com%5DFuelly”>http://www.fuelly.com) and [Fuel</a> Economy](<a href=“http://www.fueleconomy.gov%5DFuel”>http://www.fueleconomy.gov) ? Gentle driving tends to get better fuel economy, while hard driving tends to get worse fuel economy.</p>
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<p>How many of the repairs involved the automatic transmission (a notorious weak point in many Chrysler vehicles of the 1990s and early 2000s)?</p>
<p>None of them, ucbalum. A lot of electronics and accessories (power liftgate, power windows, etc.), both headlights (separately), brakes repeatedly (rotors kept warping, within less than a year of replacement), but never the transmission.</p>
<p>I don’t miss that van. It was pleasant to drive, very comfortable to ride in, and nice all around when it was working, but it wasn’t working nearly often enough.</p>
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The water pump isn’t driven by the timing belt, it’s driven by an accessory belt - usually the big serpentine one that also drives the alternator, PS pump, etc. On cars with a timing belt, as opposed to a timing chain, the timing belt is a maintenance item that needs to be replaced at some point but to get to the timing belt one usually needs to remove the water pump. As long as one’s removing the water pump they may as well put a new one back on since the labor’s the same. This is why the water pump usually would be replaced if one’s changing the timing belt. Ditto the radiator hoses and often the serpentine belt or other belts.</p>
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Well, there could have been a bad leak because of it and if someone didn’t pay attention they could have overheated the engine but that’s true for a radiator hose or a radiator leak or any other leak as well. In my experience the water pump ‘typically’ doesn’t leak that catastrophically. They usually start with a fairly slow leak where you notice a tiny puddle under the car for days or even weeks. They usually leak past the bearing in the front. You can also usually smell the anti-freeze smell from the leak. In other words, there’s generally time to get it taken care of without risking a major coolant dump/overheating situation unless one pays no attention whatsoever to their car. A keyword I used here is ‘typically’ because there are exceptions.</p>
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Please tell that to my Dodge! I generally don’t get much more than that, or even that, out of that water pump on that particular car. I buy lifetime warranty replacement pumps from Autozone and just keep having them give me another one for free so I only spent about $40 for the 4 pumps I’ve gotten from them for this car. The replacement lasted as long as the factory one so I don’t fault the replacement one. How long the water pump will typically live depends on a lot of things including the design of the pump and engine, the environment it’s driven in, whether one maintained the cooling system properly, etc.</p>
<p>Bottom line - if you’re buying a used car, especially one with mileage above 50K miles, you should expect a likelihood of some maintenance having been done and a replaced water pump is considered a normal item - not a big red flag like an internal engine problem or something which it sounds is the angle you’re looking at this and hence your concern. Moreover, a manufacturer certified warranty to 100K miles protects you assuming the time duration is reasonable as well - i.e. if you have another couple of years in time and mileage before the end of the warranty then that’s pretty good. Most dealers have already done a fairly extensive check of the vehicle before offering the certified warranty since they don’t want to lose money by having to do a lot of warranty work on it.</p>
<p>Besides, you’ll be saving a lot of money anyway due to it being a used car so some maintenance wouldn’t usually be a big deal financially.</p>
<p>I think you should eliminate the variable of this WP having been replaced from your decision process on this.</p>
<p>Lots of people don’t maintain their car cooling system properly which can lead to lots of engine problems. Too, many people don’t use the manufacturers’ recommended antifreeze/coolant which can contribute to premature water pump failure. Many coolants today don’t have silicates (kinda like fine, small, small sand particles) in them that can prematurely wear out a water pump…best to use the coolant recommended in owner car manual. There are many types of coolant out there and they don’t all mix well.</p>
<p>Thank you for your replies. I think I will pursue it further.</p>