With plenty of coolant, filled with Leisle(?) funnel, the WP made a knocking sound and I thought it may have been a rod. I used a stethoscope and isolated the sound to the WP. Removed the belt and fired the engine up briefly and there was no knocking. The pump appears fine in my hand, nothing obviously wrong with it at all? All I know is I sure the fuck hope it is JUST the HG! I am going out of town for 12 days the end of this week and have too much going on between now and then to even mess with it.

One of the first things I will be doing is hooking up my Maxigauge so I can monitor the essentials properly and not rely on Mazda's crap instruments.

Track, what kind of coolant temps are you seeing on the track in traffic? I may be mistaken but I thought I remember reading that some were regularly seeing 230ish and THEY didn't worry as long as things didn't go much over 240 for long periods of time......

I believe i blew an hg because of air in my cooling system. I replaced it and haven't looked back. Replaced with same part number and all.

270-ish is survivable for oil temps (you can probably go higher for short periods, but I definitely wouldn't do it knowingly). Stock (C5) vettes hit that all the time on track. coolant temps I would definitely try to stay under 230. I have hit 240 before, but I backed off at that point.

I don't see high coolant temps on track, mostly 190-210 before my coolant reroute + oil cooler. now my OBD2 logger shows 180-190* consistently, traffic or not. Note: I don't have a turbo.