How to replace the VW California water pump
Replace the water pump in your Cali, by yourself, step-by-step, and under $20!
Before you begin
Do you really need to change your water pump? I’ve come across multiple people who were told they needed a new pump, but that was not the case. Before you replace your pump, make sure it is actually dead and rule out other possible problems with much simpler solutions.
Replacing the VW California water pump
What you’ll need
The list of required materials is not very long, there’s nothing necessarily complex and everything is quite inexpensive:
- VW California Water Pump replacement. I don’t know if you can actually purchase it directly from VW but I assume it will be more expensive. The Cali uses a Comet VIP-PLUS submersible water pump; just no VW branding and different plastic color. This is fairly cheap. I paid around 17€ for mine.
Note: make sure to check in your local camper stores and don’t just dive into Amazon. In my case, the same pump was over 35€ on Amazon. - Adjustable spanner/crescent wrench + pliers: this is to open the water tank lid. Combining these tools, you can open the lid without buying the “tank opener” or having to make an opener yourself.
- Scissors: you could probably use the pliers, depending on the type, but a pair of scissors will come in handy.
- Electrical tape, shrink tubes or cable connectors: depending on how you want to re-connect things. The electrical tape will be useful also to put the pump’s wires back through the grommet in the water tank.
Step-by-step instructions with images
I’ll try to keep this as simple but as detailed as possible. If you run into any issues, let me know in the comments and I will update the guide.
Disconnect cables
Disconnect the water level sensor and water pump cables. The connectors are covered by the foam you see around the cables. You’ll have to disconnect both. Once that is done, I recommend you undo the water pump cable loop, as to have a clearer view of how that is all set up (and you will eventually have to remove this anyway).
Open the water tank
If you read the forums, you will know by now that this is crazy tight. You can use the wrench+pliers approach, buy the “tank opener” tool some stores sell, or make a tool yourself. There are several forums that cover each option. I opted to try using the spanner+pliers and it worked quite nicely.
Remove the tank lid+water sensor.
The water lid and sensor go together. It’s important you have unplugged the connections first, otherwise, the cable will get twisted. Try to remove it as vertically and carefully as possible, so as not to bang around the water sensor too much.
Have a look inside
Now you will be able to see inside the water tank and you should see the pump, tucked in its corner, surrounded by 3 “protuberances” (please, let me know in the comments what I can call those… my English failed me here). From what I could see, there’s nothing really holding it in place.
Note: Yes, I did most of this with my water tank completely full of water. At some point I let some out, not so much because I needed to, but because I was taking pictures to see how it all looked from the inside, and dipped my phone in the water. 😬
Remove the pump
You can now take the water pump out of the tank. To replace it, you will have to release the hose and cut the cable, so you can pull it through the grommet and out of the tank.
Note: When cutting the cable, my advice, in retrospect, would be to leave it as long as possible. It depends on how you plan to reconnect things back, but cutting 15-20 cms away from the connector would be my suggestion.
Put the new cable through the grommet
At this point, you are ready to place the new water pump. I did not have much trouble getting the cable through the grommet, I just used some tape to help the cables get through.
I had to use both hands, so I basically hugged around the wardrobe pillar, one hand through the water tank lid and the other through the back (gas tank).
Place the new pump
At this point, you can place the water pump in the tank and tuck it into place. The final step is to connect the wires. I took apart the original connector and took a couple of spades from some water-proof plugs and used those on the new wires to fit them into the original connector. It’s not the best fit, but didn’t want to replace the other end of the connector.
Wrapping it up
Once it was all done, I closed the lid (left it a little less tight in case I needed to reopen it), reconnected the water sensor cable, and placed the foam covers back.
Done!
And that’s all. I gave it a try and voilà, water was flowing again.
I hope you found this useful. If this helped you or if you have any comments on how to improve this article, please let me know in the comments below!