[chase206]

Cheap water pumps typically have issues leaking out the bearing seal. The cheap materials will fail prematurely.

Looks like you already had an MLS gasket so perhaps it was faulty. Try either the Hyundai or Mahle brand gasket with your next water pump.

 

[chase206]

I would not use any RTV on the Hyundai/Mahle gaskets which are self sealing with that black coating. How about torque specs? Did you evenly torque all the bolts down with a torque wrench per the Hyundai manual? If not, uneven torque will cause a leak eventually due to uneven thermal expansion.

 

[chase206]

Try to get OEM water pump (korean made) some Gates wp are hit or miss (chinese made). Torque wrench is a must i think.

OEM is Gates though. Hyundai doesn't make any of the timing components and simply white labels other brands. I've torn down two original motors that were just over 60k miles and all the timing and water pump components were Gates. One was an 04 and the other was an 06. All the Gates kits that failed were chalked up to be user error on installation. Or the person bought a hodge podge kit from ebay that only contained a Gates belt and all the other components were junk brands.