Vy commodore oil on waterpump housing bolts

[DeveloperChris]

I am replacing the water pump on my v6 commodore and find a significant amount of oil on the water pump to head bolts on the right hand side.

When removing the bolts they were covered in oil. When I removed the bolts completely water streamed out of the holes. I had just flushed the engine so the water was clean. When I removed the top bolt the oil literally dripped off it.

After copious amounts of searching I could find no-one talking about these bolts having oil on them and could find no video's with enough detail to see if this is normal or not.

There is no evidence of oil in the water pump.

It occurred to me there may be a blown gasket on the timing cover.

Is that a possibility, should I be stripping off the timing chain cover? Or do these bolts go into an oil channel and this is just normal?

I have attached a couple of pictures showing the worst bolt and the bolt holes.

 

[Immortality]

The oil might be coming from higher up like the intake manifold valley seal. The 4 long WP bolts go into the coolant jackets in the block, these bolts will need some sort of sealant on the threads when re-assembling.

 

[DeveloperChris]

Thanks for the response.

This car is destined to be sold. it been sitting in my yard for a long while now consuming space and dollars. Is it a viable option to put sealant on the bolts and fit the new water pump?

Or is that likely to fail in the short term resulting in issues for the new buyer?

 

[Immortality]

Yup, just clean it up and re-seal the bolts.

 

[BlackVXGTS]

Looks like someone has been using water in the cooling system, instead of 50:50 water and coolant.