Hey guys,

Have a 1999 Tacoma 4x4 5 Speed with the lovely 3.4. Almost 275,000 Miles

A little while back I noticed one day that it sounded like one of my drive belts was squeaking. Not a slip type noise but a squeak.

Today I heard it and it was doing it louder and was really annoying the piss out of me, I cannot stand to hear belt squealing/squeaks. I stopped and popped the hood. Looked closer this time and noticed the water pump pulley had a slight wobble to it. I switched the engine off and looked again, I could see one spot on the pump where the pulley was making slight contact with the metal thus causing this squeak sound. I got the truck home and I just pulled the Alternator and P/S belt off, removed the fan and the pulley to get a closer look.

Now with the belt pulley that the ALT and P/S belts ride on off I can spin the actual circular piece that it bolts onto and it wobbles, not spinning true by any means.

I did some searching and found something out that this part is the fan support bracket and something about a bearing and it being expensive but I couldn't find any clear info.

Can anyone help me further so I can get this resolved? I imagine going down the road at 2k RPMs and having this bearing or whatever fail completely would be BADDD news. Makes me cringe thinking about it.

 

You are talking about the Fan Pulley Bracket (Toyota p/n 16307-62011), popularly called the fake or dummy water pump. You can get the OEM AISIN part on Amazon for a good price, like $138 (AISIN p/n FBT-004):


RockAuto.com probably carries the Aisin as well. Dealer list is like $539 for the same part in a pretty red box.

Any timing belt DIY will show you how to R&R this part.

 

Thank you very much! I appreciate it greatly. Dummy or fake water pump is a good name for it cause it sure looks like it. I looked up from that Aisin part you listed above and then found it for $115 on ebay. Not to bad and i am sure it is the original bearing so no wonder it is bad after 275k miles. I may go ahead and do the Timing Belt, Waterpump and all tensioners and drive belts while in there.

Again, thank you!

 

@OP

On my 3.4L engine the water pump pulley is behind the large black plastic cover and is driven by the timing belt. One cannot see it until that cover comes off, so I think you prolly mistook some other pulley for the water pump pulley. Say again which pulley was wobbling??

 

I had initially gotten confused. I already knew the Timing Belt drove the water pump but how I got confused I don't know.

The pulley that is wobbling is the top pulley at the cooling fan and the Alternator and Power Steering belts both use it.

 

Hmmm. Sorry, can't help you there. When I removed that support bracket last August I don't recall any movement (other than rotary) in the pulley so I just reused it.

 

I am about to order the fan support bracket. I had to go back into Ebay and search for that Aisin bracket again and found it but below the listing was another fan support bracket but instead of a price of $115.00, it was $40.00. A HUGE difference. I assume this $40.00 part has to be made out of super CRAPPY metal but if it would work I would sure hate to spend another $75.00 on that Aisin part. Any body have experience with the CHEAP one? Both parts are listed below.

Cheap one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/95-04-TOYOTA...VRDDDw&vxp=mtr

Aisin: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Engine-Cooli...9VlXYI&vxp=mtr

 

I don't drive my TRD much but when I do it's at least a couple hundred miles away from home when I BEGIN my off-road driving. From there I may be off road beginning 800 miles or so away from home. I drive alone so I demand genuine Toyota parts and in your case, the genuine Toyota part. I wouldn't pay $500+ for one though, so I would go with the $115 part. The $70 savings doesn't go very far when you are disabled due to a cheap-ass part...

 

I have not pulled one of these off yet .

Is it possible to just replace the bearing.

Now I am curious !!

 

I agree. It's a pretty mission-critical part and I don't see how you could make it for $40 without using a cheapass Chinese bearing and inferior metal in the casting. Go AISIN for $115.

If $$ are really short, Amazon has some warehouse Aisins in damaged packaging for $51.78. It says used, but I think that has to be just because of the box.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...condition=used

 

Wyoming, don't think I've ever seen just the bearing replaced on them. I looked at it years ago and ended up buying a new AISIN.

 

Thank you guys for the responses. Been busy so I haven't had time to respond. Bought the Aisin part for 115. Wish I would have seen TheDurks response sooner so I could have checked amazon but no big deal. It is suppose to be here Thursday so I will get it changed out this weekend before that darn thing grenades and causes my cooling fan to grenade something else.