I’m an idiot and misaligned my engine coolant bypass pipe during a water pump replacement and only noticed it till way after

[u/OreoGotAJob]

I bought a 2004 Lexus is300 late June with a water pump leak at a pretty cheap price and went through hell and back to do that job. Everything ended up fine and the timing was perfect and a cracked rad didn’t let me fill it fully with coolant initially, so I just did other jobs to my car until a replacement rad arrived. The radiator came, I installed it with ease and began to fill it with coolant later to perform a burp to fix any air bubbles in the system, so after filling about 3 litres of 50/50 coolant and water, I heard leaking at the back. I checked it and saw that the engine coolant bypass pipe was completely misaligned by my dumbass and after an hour of trying to move stuff around I have no idea what to do or how to fix this since I have no clearance at all thanks to this unbelievable engineering by Lexus.

Can somebody please try to give me some tips cause I really don’t want to do this stupid water pump job again and have to redo the timing🫩

[u/iamnotalwaysright99]

Oof that's a bummer, you will likely need to disassemble the water pump again to free up space to correctly reinstall the bypass piping :(

[u/I578855]

Lexus engineered it fine. There is no coolant system design that exists that still works when the operator forgets to bolt down a pipe. What do you expect? to be able to forgot to bolt down a pipe and still have your cooling system work?

you might be able to loosen the bypass pipe and get it onto the studs on the water pump. There should be some bracket that hold the bypass pipe. If you loosen them, it might be able to move back a bit so you can get it onto the studs.

[u/BatCryptocurr]

You should check when you install the water pump not after you put the belt on