unsprung

My radiator broke about 2 weeks ago and when I got the car, he told me everything looked fine outside of the radiator and the water pump (some plastic piece on it melted, I believe). Initially, he said the valves and heads might be affected, but after seeing nothing unusual in the oil and the clunking sound I had after the car overheated wasn't present anymore, he thinks the water pump failing was the cause of this whole mess.

I've been doing some light driving with it (still haven't hit the highways yet since I haven't gotten a chance to drive it much) and wanted to see if there is anything I should look out for that MIGHT have been affected that they might have overlooked. The car runs like it did before and I don't feel any loss of power, but I will be more sure about this once I hit the highways again.

Frank Fontaine

BMW's had major problems with the water pumps on the previous gen 5's, not sure what their series are as I'm only familiar with the 3's (E36/E46). With an alloy block and heads, often the motor would be cooked after a water pump failure. I think 4th gens and 3rd gens had aluminum blocks and heads, so I'd guess they are susceptible to damage if the coolant gets too hot. Probably head gaskets as well. What can you do? As long as you shut it down ASAP when the pump went, there isn't much more you can do. If it runs fine, so be it, just drive the car. That's why imho sometimes the old iron block instills a little more confidence because it's not as affected when another system such as cooling fails. We can't spend our lives worrying about coulda/shoulda/woulda. I mean I was looking to pick up an A4 used since the winter is supposed to be harsh ('98 2.8 Quattro) and the prices are absolutely insane--then you see stuff like "timing belt replaced." On a V6, still? Anyway, amazing the difference in resale with Maxima and German cars or Hondas. No bargains to be found on the latter.