so im pretty sure my water pump is on its way out, every time i park somewhere i get a small puddle of coolant dripping from my skid plate. what all is needed to replace the water pump as far as labor? i did a search and found one write up, and it seemed ridiculous on all the things he had to take off?

What kind of vehicle? EA82, 81?

 

I've got a write up on here (possibly the one you found) and it seems pretty intense, but it's all fairly straightforward.

I had to remove the alternator, get the A/C out of the way, pull the radiator and the electric fan with it, and the clutch fan, and you have to either break away a piece of the timing belt covers, or remove it completely.

Because I didn't care about my A/C charge, I unhooked the lines to the condensor and pulled it out as well. Doing that makes the water pump much more accesible, but I'm pretty sure you can leave it in. Leaving it in is going to make the job a bit more challenging though.

 

Got the power steering pump out of the way too.

 

If you're going to dig in to the car that far, and your timing belts/tensioners haven't been replaced, it'd be a good time to do that as well.

 

Might wanna do some investigating and try to see if it is indeed the waterpump or maybe just a hose leaking.

 

All of these things were what had to be done to replace the waterpump on an EA82.

Checked through my old threads and found that I never did put the write up for the waterpump together. I've got the one from when I replaced my oil pump, though, and the pictures from it can be helpful so I'll provide a link here.

 

Most of the disassembly for the oil pump is what you'd have to do for the waterpump anyway. The only difference is you have to dig a little deeper to do the oil pump.

 

here's the pics and all that jazz

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showthread.php?t=128964

 

There might be some people on here that shun breaking away piece of the timing belt cover to get to one of the bolts for the waterpump, but it's either you do that, or you have to pull the crank pulley off to get the timing belt cover off and that's just more work.

 

I carefully perforated the timing belt cover with a small drill bit around where I needed it to come off and the sliced through with a blade. It worked just fine and I've had no issues regarding it.

Or go ahead and take the covers off and leave them off so future maintenance is much easier.