My car is a 93 z24 and i think the water pump might have failed. I drove home from work yesterday (about 50 km) and when I got to my parking garage I could hear some squealling coming form the engine then I got out and the engine was smoking a bit. The temperature gauge was reading normal inside the car and the fan did come on and go off returning back to normal temperature while I was looking under the hood. The smoke was coming from the front passenger side of the engine and it smelt like coolant so i'm hoping its just a small leak and it was coolent evaporating off the engine. I am going to run some coolant stop leak and see what happens but if it is a shot water pump any idea what the damage on that is? I read about guys paying a grand to have theres replaced but they were all 2.4L not the 3.1. Also is this something I can change at home? The haynes manual makes it sound fairly simple until they say you might need to unbolt and lift the engine which I don't know how nore do I have the tools to do.

Thanks for any help.

I took the car out for a 10 minute drive and the nosies seems to have stopped so hopefully it isn't the water pump. the car got up to temperature but it kept fluctuating normally as the fan goes off and on . If it was the water pump the temperature wouldn't go down but keep going up until the car completely overheated right?

There is still a little bit of smoke coming from the passenger side but its not as bad as yesterday. Its hard to tell because it has been raining for the last 2 days but I think there is a leak of either oil or coolant running under the ac compresser and collecting on either the frame or the splash gaurd. I'll give it the drive to and from work to see if the coolant light comes on but any help or suggestions would still be appreciated.

thanks.

The water pump on the 3.1 is VERY easy to change, and is pretty inexpensive. Make sure you bleed the airbubbles out of the system after you change it though.

yeah about people paying a grand to change the water pump on the 2.4 is because it is a B**ch to change.... i change the water pump on my dads 2.4 grand am.... the reason it is such a pain is because it is run off the timeing chain not the serp. belt!! It sucked bad!! But anyway!!! and i dont have the v6 but if you had to unbolt and lift the motor that should just be unbolt the motor mount and jack the motor up with a floor jack.... i had to do that on the grand am and all it was was the side motor mount.... easy! Good luck man!

Water pump will give you more than screeching. When mine died, the car dumped out smoke like crazy out from under the car, through the hood, wheel wells, etc and sounded as if you had an axle just spinning around on the ground under the car as you drove...like ear blowing screeching...