While changing my oil and doing the usual undercarriage inspection I noticed a trail of cooling dripping from above. I tracked it down to the water pump area. I'm assuming the gasket has a leak. I've watched a video on changing it in a jk. Would you guys go ahead and change the pump even if it's just the gasket that is bad? Seems like a pretty straight forward repair but any advise would be appreciated.

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Another good reason to do your own oil changes....gets you under the hood to spot the little things before they become big things!

I noticed a small coolant leak too....turned out to be rad cap leak.

OP how many miles on your JK?

I too have a small crusty leak on my water pump gasket, just rolled 100,000 miles.

When it comes time to fix gasket I will do a new water pump at the same time and a rad flush.

You're in there might as well kill three birds one stone for the cost of the pump.

It's a bit of a known issues.

There is a great write up on this forum on how to think the OP of that thread is DR Ninja? (Going on memory)

And for the love of all things good make sure you use the correct coolant type!!! Mine is a 08 so Jeep specs HOAT, 2012 and up is OAT.

Let me know if you need any further help with coolant....just wet through all this Jeep doesn't make it easy and don't trust your dealer to just hand you the right one. Knowledge is power!

 

I def use the hoat stuff in mine. I just hit 66k in my 07. You are right I might as well kill three birds . Especially since a NEW water pump is $40.
My other question is most direction say not to use gasket sealant with the gasket? Some people still use it. What is the right way?

 

I changed mine at about 125k, same issue, slow leak that started to show up on the garage floor... I did use a little film of RTV on both sides of the gasket. Been at this for a lot of years now and always have and probably always will use a little bit of that goey stuff to make sure the liquids stay inside!