Originally posted by Chris Hightower:
Just FYI: The new white plastic impellor works just fine. The black plastic one had inherant flaws from the beginning.
I'm running with the white one. Less rotating mass, too.
Wow, I've been screaming this for months - nice to hear someone else say it for once.
The black impeller blew. Sometimes it broke on its own. I don't think the white impeller kills itself, but ...
The back of the pump sucks too (cone something or other), and if that goes it can kill either the white or black impeller, and the metal impeller won't do much good once it stops spinning.
Unless you buy the Ford pump, you don't get the rear of the pump so you're still on borrowed time if you have a bad cone, even with a metal impeller. If your cone is fine and you have a black impeller (how many could possibly be left?), you need a metal pump at your first possible chance. The best way to check any of this is to pull your pump out and look at it.
This is what I've taken from the million water pump threads. I've only seen my water pump once (50k white impeller now, had 24k on it then) and I didn't know what to check at that time.