My son-in-law has a 1996 Volvo 850 wagon (non-turbo) that appears to be leaking water from the timing belt idler pulley. I was expecting to see water leaking from the water pump. Is it possible that a water pump and/or gasket failure can result in water leaking from the pulley or do we have something else going on? Any advice and/or speculation would be appreciated.

Additional info...he just replace the alternator.

Thanks!

 

No. Likely the belt or wind in the cover is pulling the water pump leak up to the roller.

 

What he said or it might be spraying out and hitting the pulley but it's most likely the water pump. Not really anything else under there that could.

 

With the timing belt cover off, we added water to the overflow and the leak sure did appear to be coming from the idler pulley. He took the pulley off and the back of it is discolored like you might expect from contact with water and coolant. I don't think he tried adding water with the pulley off.

Thanks for the replies so far!

 

I don't know how close the water jacket is, but you could have a cracked block if you are certain it is not from the water pump.

 

Follow up...

I finally had some time to "dig in" and see if I could better spot from where the water was coming. As a reminder, I was seeing water at the timing idler pulley, but with the back timing belt cover I could not tell for sure if the water was from above that location (it did kind of look like it) or not. I decided if I removed the power steering pump and thermostat that I could see better from the front of the car. So, after doing this, I immediately saw that the thermostat housing (rectangular piece that attaches to the engine block) was cracked. The water was leaking and was channeled by the brace where the accessories (PS, Alt and AC compressor) attach to flow down behind the back timing belt cover.

Anyway, problem solved. The part is around $60.

Now...how much to charge my son-in-law???

Again, thanks for the replies.

 

Son-in-law... That's a rough one.

 

I guess you'd just have to take your hourly rate, discount for a relative and then multiply by the two weeks it's taken you to find the source of the leak