It seems that I've read a few postings about water pump failures that resulted in engine damage. Has anyone developed or produced a back up or "standby" pump to prevent this from happening ?
Yeah, it's called preventive maintenance. Replacing the impeller yearly and watching for early signs of trouble.
Make sure to look at your gauges and be sure the alarms work.
The ones that have the engine damage are the ones that never replace the impeller, never look at the gauges, have alarm systems that don't work, and even if they know about the problem, keep driving anyway. Called lack of good common sense.
Lot of plumbing logistics to consider, and even then by the time it takes to figure out the pump failed the old impeller pieces are already clogging up the outlets, so even if you somehow switched to a backup before all the exhaust rubber melted it would more than likely still go into an overheat condition.
