boomtufo

Yesterday I drove to work and the car drove fine and stayed nice and cool on the Temp gauge as usual.
I park the car and work an 8 hour shift and come back to it when I get off,
only to notice the car sitting in a huge puddle of coolant that clearly came from my car.
Now recently every once in a while I've been having an issue with coolant overflowing from the reservoir,(However it only overflows when the car is off) but never this much except for when I was running it extremely hard, and since I've replaced just about everything in the coolant system other than the water pump, it has pretty much stopped that issue.
But after work when I started the car I looked around the radiator and noticed water basically shooting out the bottom of the water pump. So I'm pretty sure that means the pump is about to fail since the water is flying out of the weep hole, right?

Basically my question is, would it be possible for all the coolant that was surrounding my car have leaked from the water pump alone? Even when the car was turned off?

Or should I assume most of it came out of the reservoir? But also when it last overflowed a lot of it was because there was about 80% water in the system and hardly any coolant which was causing it to boil and evaporate.. After I refilled the system with about 70% coolant and the rest distilled water. Ever since I did that it hasn't even come close to overflowing, at least the last 3 times I drove it and got it up to operating temp..

Is it also possible that if the water pump was failing that it could have caused the system to over flow?

Or should I just change the pump and go from there?

I'm afraid my next step is to bite the bullet and change my head gasket, if the problem is not fixed.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated, sorry for the long post.

shoebox

When the pump is getting tired, it is common for it to leak out the weep hole after you shut it off. It will come out until the pressure is relieved. It may also do it sometimes and not others. So, to best check, do so right after you drive it or rent/buy a pressure tester to check it when it is cold.