L-series coolant leak

Hi everybody, I post from time to time when I have something to offer, but not recently. I have owned Freelanders from 1998. This one new in 2000. I've clocked up close to 140k miles in this one and have done all the usual things one gets used to being a Land Rover owner, in fact only today I stripped out and repaired the osf window lift.

However the reason I would welcome opinions, is that I recently renewed the water pump because It looked as if it had started to leak (tell tale pink drips on the ground!) Anyway having done all that, a pig of a job, guess what? still got wet pink spots on the ground. It was a genuine LR part with all new o-rings. It is impossible to see where the leak is coming from but the amount of leakage is slight and very similar to what prompted me to renew it in the first place.

I wondered what the experts would suggest. Is it likely perhaps that a new water pump could weep from the gland? I've never heard of this and I suppose I'm just putting off the inevitable conclusion that it will have to come to bits again.

Is there any other possible secret place for a water leak that I haven't thought of? grateful for any useful suggestions!

what type of gasket was it did you clean the mating surface enough maybe a leaking pipe near the water pump

Thanks for the reply. I was very careful to clean the mating surfaces. There is no gasket, just an o-ring. It could be a water pipe but it would have to be leaking before and after the replacement water pump. I suppose will have to get the belly pan off again and get in there for a good look.
Cheers
Happyhippo

if its a pipe split with age then it could leak onto the pump making you think it was that

these are just ideas without seeing the car

the coolant rail (black metal pipe) corrodes and rusts through at the front of the engine.
had to replace mine, now that was a pig of a job.

Thanks for the replies guys. The rusty pipe sounds worthy of investigation, but it will have to wait for a more thorough investigation. It is only losing a small amount of coolant so if I leave it for a bit it should be obvious where the pink stuff is coming from.

Hello, me again!

After some months of losing coolant, I decided to pursue this again. I bought a new set of land rover o-rings and stripped out the brand new land rover water pump again. This time I used a 4post lift and tackled the job from underneath. Apart from requiring 1/4 drive sockets with very flexible drives and the hands of a 10year old the job is simple enough. Having removed the item, I found no sign of any place where the coolant is leaking from. The o-rings were perfect. It is not possible to determine if coolant is leaking from the tell tale hole in the pump, but I suspect that this is the case. There was no sign of leakage from any of the hoses. The leakage only occurs under pressure at normal running temp and appears to come from behind the Aircon compressor.

Anyway I carefully reassembled, purged the airlocks etc, ran engine up to temp and sure enough the dreaded pink bleeding from vicinity of Water pump. Exactly the same symptoms as before!

One suggestion by the LR dealer who sold me the pump was to use a rad sealer in the cooling system. I said that this can't be right and that the system shouldn't need such gloop to seal properly. I'm thinking now that I might buy a cheaper water pump (around £20 from an MG supplier) and fit that. At least if it cures the problem it would confirm that LRs water pump is faulty.

Would appreciate any helpful suggestions from L-series eggsperts!