How many miles are on the vehicle? Remove the accessory belt and spin the water pump by hand, can you feel side to side play? There may be a chance replacing the water pump at the same time wouldn't be a bad idea.
I just changed my cousin's water pump/heater hose elbows on his 07 GT with 107k miles, today. It was the original pump which straight up seized yesterday and threw/jammed the belt between the oil filter and crank pulley.
You could easily feel just how worn out the bearing was.
I haven't heard any issues regarding the newly released aluminum heater hose units.
Now on the other hand, some SII engine's had the horizontal bolt / 140 amp alternator bracket that it itself installed into the water pump inlet / timing cover and only used an elbow for the coolant coming out of the intake manifold.
If you weren't gentle, those would break off in the timing cover, condemning the entire alternator bracket to the scrap yard.
