my water pump i replaced 5 years ago suddenly seized. luckily it threw the belt off pretty quick so it stopped rotating, but not before gouging out the front cover housing. I'm not doing a new front cover, let's get that out of the way now. So, with this little gouging... I will clean it all up and flush it well, but I can tell there is a little bit of the lower right tip missing. I'm wondering how much difference anyone thinks that will make on the flow.

So do I
1. put it back together and go for it

2. rebuild that little corner with JB weld and reshape it

Aaaaand...attack!

 

Use a file/dremel to clean that corner off, then slap it all back together.

 

Reuse it.

 

100%

Clean up the corner, 3M pad the center scratches and that front cover is fine.
If this was the surface of the oil pump then the outcome would be different.
Lucky for you this is a nonissue!

 

In my almost 10 years on this forum I don't recall ever hearing of a water pump seizing. Leaking, yes, even coming apart and causing mass carnage, but not seizing up. I hope you were in a safe place when it happened.

How about others here; how rare is it to have a water pump seize up? The water pump, fan and fan clutch on my truck are all original at 176K. I inspected all three when I changed the coolant a week ago and all seemed fine. I removed the fan and looked carefully for cracks, finding none. The fan clutch still feels like it's full of peanut butter. And the pump has no wobble and no leaks. I've thought about changing the pump and fan clutch proactively but I hate to ditch perfectly good parts.

 

I've never heard of it either! And it's only 5 years old! They leak, they aren't supposed to seize!

 

You can see the pump I pulled off. It hopped the bearings on one side and seized

 

I’ve seen one at a junk yard seized up! It was completely solid and locked up.