Curious because this happened to a friend of mine last week. He has gauges, and his original and stock lift pump was within range -- 9 WOT, 16 idle, etc. The VP44 died anyway at 66K miles, with no tapping the pump, only an Edge timing box and 275 injectors. He uses fuel additive (Power Service) every tankful.

I've got gauges, I use additive, and I've gone through two lp's in 40K miles. On my third lp, 22K miles ago, I spliced in a Holly Red back at the tank to push fuel to the lp, and now I've got 20 psi idle, 17 cruise, 13 WOT. No problems so far.

Still, I wonder if anyone has rough information on how often the VP44 fails without it being related to the lp.

 

With a VP44 it's a crap shot. Who knows when they will go. Having good pressure and running additive seems to help them last longer. I've gone through 4 lift pumps and I'm still on my original VP at 80k miles. I run additive every tankful and I'm very picky about my fuel pressure (I don't want it below 10 ever). I also tapped my wire a long time ago and ran it with 0 fuel pressure for a while so who knows what that did to it. As of right now, the wire isn't tapped and I'm running 275's. So far so good.

 

Original VP44 died at 4,000 miles, 2 months after I bought it.

Still on the original lift pump, 44,000 miles on the ticker.

Only had the guages for a year, lift pump idles at 14, 10 at wot.


phox

 

Unpredictable, some tap wire and it dies on the spot others like myself have original pump in truck with wiretap over 100k

 

The biggest enemy of the VP44 is air in the fuel. If you use clean non-foaming fuel from a reliable source, they can last just about forever. One shot of air and they are immediately damaged to some extent.

I know a handful of guys with way over 100,000 miles on their pumps, and a lot of others that have had one or more failures. In my experience, the guys with the most pump life are ones that keep their fuel tanks full, perform filter maintenance on a regular basis, and do not pull them at their limits in hot weather.

I ran them for years, and crashed a pump every 30,000 miles. Then I changed my fuel system to much larger feed tubes, added a very high volume pump in the tank, added two commercial filters from Racor, and never had another problem. The guy that bought that truck now has over 240,000 miles, and the VP that I installed at 60,000 is still going strong.

The pumps that were made near the end of the run, and all the rebuilt pumps, are very good and will last much better than the early models prior to mid/late 2001.

Blue Chip Diesel has a very good article on the pump and what causes it to fail. If I were you and was worried about pump life, I would install a the FASS double filter air removal system, or the Air Dog from Fuel Preporator, both of which remove air from the fuel and replace the OEM lift pump, and figure your VP will then last just about forever.

 

have the vp pumps been replaced by something better on the new trucks?

 

Well, the pumps are better, but now there are other problems. The new CP3 Common Rail pump is better than the VP, but the injectors are the failure part now...still not cheap, IMHO

Chris

 

I have 165K on mine and its still running strong, and I've lost the LP 3 times! Just lucky I guess. I do keep the fuel tank at least 1/2 full.

 

I'm starting to worry a bit... Still waiting on my guages but...

I've never changed a LP or VP44 yet... KNOCKIN' ON WOOD - HARD!

If got close to 58K on the clock and starting worry about the LP mostly...

According to UPS tracing the box of goodies should be here 4/11/05 Monday!