Fuel pump noise normal?

[AtomicHoe094]

the 20 or so fuel pumps I have changed on GM vehicals died due to overheating..

+1. dads avalanche died that way as well. you should never keep your tank on empty and drive around anyways.

 

[SunlitComet]

the 20 or so fuel pumps I have changed on GM vehicals died due to overheating..

Sounds like a Texas thing

 

[hiwaycruzer]

Thanks to all for the thoughtful replies.
I guess the safest thing to do is replace the pump and filter, and always keep the tank at least 1/2 full.

 

[WalterMitty]

Thanks to all for the thoughtful replies.
I guess the safest thing to do is replace the pump and filter, and always keep the tank at least 1/2 full.

I certainly agree that replacing a whiny 15 year old fuel pump with 177,000 miles on it is a prudent thing to do.

As for the 1/2 (1/4+) tank of gas, that's too restrictive for me. I've seen the back and forth on this for years and many folks are unconvinceable. And while I haven't changed hundreds of fuel pumps, I have conducted industrial Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) on a variety of products.

What I think I know is that the GMT400 platform (and other types) have fuel pump failures greater than anybody would like to see. There may be knowledge inside GM engineering somewhere that is informing current fuel pump manufacturing (my new fuel pump has a lifetime parts & labor warranty without any minimum fuel tank level caveats) but at least for some period of time failure issues were too common.

The challenge in assigning a failure cause by looking only at failed examples is that no comparison can be made to equipment that was subjected to the same treatment that did not fail. Said another way, I think the percentage of people that *didn't* allow their fuel levels to fall below 1/4 tank is too small to account for those total number of fuel pumps that were never changed.

I will confess that there have been times in my career that I didn't want to argue too vigorously that some element of Customer "abuse" wasn't a contributing factor to a product failure; particularly while I was still trying to figure out the real cause. GM (and other manufacturers) are well served by a cadre of mechanics all reporting that failed pumps show signs of overheating that they attribute to insufficient cooling due to fuel tank levels. The cooling effect of the gas can be a true statement without destructive overheating being caused by low fuel.

The missing piece(s) include paired comparison analysis of failed and unfailed pumps subjected to the same hypothesized adverse conditions. Your typical mechanic doesn't change a lot of parts that are working (duh!). So two pumps could be subjected to repeated run-dry cycles: one with defect or design flaw "X" and the other without and no one would independently identify the defect without considerable unreasonable effort.

So there are probably some premature failure statistics for the total population of fuel pumps produced. My hypothesis is that this correlates to the occurrence of that "X" factor. If you're the guy that has a pump that never quits no matter what you do to it, that tells you where you fall in the distribution much more accurately than the guy who has to replace his pump and swears and declares he refueled his truck twice as often as necessary, so maybe his wife, kid, or brother ran it out of gas and ruined everything. Conversely, run a pint of unicorn piss with every tank if you feel better, but don't take it too hard if your pump quits anyway.

Correlation is not causation. Perhaps *all* of the fuel pumps that quit show signs of overheating, but bad bearing surfaces, misalignment in the pump assembly, even incorrect assembly practices in the manufacturing plants could cause the same thing. Maybe *all* fuel pumps show signs of overheating, but only those pumps made with plastic lots with high but in spec melt flow index numbers get soft enough to fail.

These unknowable factors guarantee that there will be people on both sides providing their own anecdotal evidence as proof of their hypothesis. Of course if there is some engineer that found the cause, and it was a manufacturing "X" factor, it will never come out as long as it would matter to any lawyer looking for some class-action money.


.

 

[SunlitComet]

I love failure analysis testing.

 

[chauncey0337]

He said unicorn piss, uh huh huh. When my fuel level gets down to a certain point it whines like no other fuel pump I've ever heard before, annoying and so loud, but It's done this since I bought it over a year ago. Also, I treat my 1/4 tank line as if it were E, not for the reasons stated above but because that's just the way I treat my truck.

 

[hiwaycruzer]

Thanks, Ken, for the fuel pump failure analysis. Very detailed and informative.
For what it's worth, I try to keep my tank as full as possible to prevent atmospheric moisture from condensing and collecting in my fuel tank. I also understand that ethanol present in todays fuels is ******* fuel system components and when mixed with water the corrosiveness increases.
I'm fortunate to live near a gas station that sells ethanol-free fuel, and use it exclusively in both my vehicles.
I added Seafoam at my last fill-up to clean my fuel system, injectors, valves and combustion chambers. Any thoughts on this product?

 

[WalterMitty]

Thanks, Ken, for the fuel pump failure analysis. Very detailed and informative.
For what it's worth, I try to keep my tank as full as possible to prevent atmospheric moisture from condensing and collecting in my fuel tank. I also understand that ethanol present in todays fuels is ******* fuel system components and when mixed with water the corrosiveness increases.
I'm fortunate to live near a gas station that sells ethanol-free fuel, and use it exclusively in both my vehicles.
I added Seafoam at my last fill-up to clean my fuel system, injectors, valves and combustion chambers. Any thoughts on this product?

I haven't used Seafoam, I've only read about it. Their customers seem to like it.

I try to avoid ethanol for the same reasons you list. My Yukon isn't a daily driver so I'm concerned about stability. I'm also something of a curmudgeon on the subject; I see no sense in using tax dollars to burn food for a net loss in total energy produced. So I gladly pay more for 100% gas in protest.

.

 

[lummy]

FWIW, the S10 fuel pumps have a similar high rate of failure for roughly the same years.

They also share the same windshield wiper problem, same intake manifild leak problem and same ignition switch problems.

Just saying...

 

[SunlitComet]

Sound like an S10 thing