So for the past few weeks I've been having some temperature problems. Been solving them one by one from thermostat, ect sensor, to replacing radiator, to today replacing the water pump. My car is a 2001 firebird, I've posted pics on here before if you care to look back for it.

Usually I have my brother helping me out since he is way more experienced at car maintenance than I am, but today he had some work to do regarding landscaping, so I was in my own working in his garage. Everything is going fine, I'm watching a tutorial and following the steps as best as I could while also checking along on alldatadiy. I get the old pump off, scrape the rest of the old gasket off and get ready to put on the new one. I put it on, throw on the new waterpump, and start putting on the screws. Heres where I fucked up.

As I'm putting all 8 screws back onto the water pump, my brother comes and checks on me making sure everything is going all right (which up to that point it was) and tells me I need to tighten those screws to a certain ft lbs. Understandable right? So alldata says 11ft lbs to the screws and I'm thinking there's no way it can be to all 8 of them but what do I know, I'm just a novice. So I follow the advice, the manual not specifying which screws just the bolts, so he gives me a torque wrench and I start tightening them with the small ones first. I'm sure you know where this is going.

I'm tightening the small middle one on the top of the pump and then I heard a snap. I'm thinking in my mind: "oh cool this one is done!" as the wrench snaps when it hits a certain amount of torque. I pull the socket out and I see the bolt just snapped inside of it. I knew I fucked up then and there. Showed it to my brother, he also tells me I fucked up big time.

The rest of the screws I hand tightened to the best of my abilities using a regular wrench. I put the pulley back on, adjust the belt, do everything else, fill up the coolant and start the car. While it's running I opened a little valve where the upper hose is to let out some of the air until coolant started coming out (although I'm sure I needed to have the radiator cap off and just squeeze the tubes). Car is running okay so far, so I drive to Costco to put some gas is and on the way I notice the fans kicking in on high speeds and the Temps starting to go just above 210 again. At this point I'm feeling like a defeated man again, so I pull into the parking lot at Costco and pop the hood to see coolant basically under the water pump. I check under the car and sure enough it's spilling coolant everywhere.

I'm in the parking lot right now waiting for it to atleast cool down a little bit, then drive it back to his place and contemplate life while I have to commute home on a train about 40 miles. It sucks because I'm waiting on a call for a job where I need my car to get to, and now it's almost like I have no car. Im a little terrified to even think of bringing it into a shop to get it checked out cause I'm a college student so I know some of you will know how tight money can be sometimes. I'm at a loss for what to do. Should I keep it and see what happens? Should I sell it and get myself a beat up car until I have enough money for a better car? (I've been planning to get a GTO this year but this is a huge set back in that plan) any advice is greatly appreciated. I know it's a small community here, but it's where I started my love for all different types of Pontiacs, it just sucks that I feel like I'm at the end of the road with my baby.

TL;DR : Broke bolt inside of water pump, made already existing temp problems way worse.