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The mechanical seal in automotive water pumps is critical to the performance and reliability of the engine, requiring consistent, effective sealing performance and long operating life. In recent years, the advent of maintenance free performance requirements and increasingly severe operating conditions have resulted in significant changes to the variety and concentration of additives in cooling systems. As a consequence of these changes to the additives, various types of premature seal leakage failures have occurred during service operation. These have been categorized into four types of failure modes and compared with seals providing normal service in order to establish simulated test conditions for engine coolants containing various additives. This paper reports on the various types of failure mechanisms that were found to occur during simulated performance testing and the corrective measures that will eliminate their occurrence