Attention: TDR Forum Junkies We were heading back home from a 4000 mile trip with a 12,000# load, and the mechanical FP guage started randomly dropping from it's normal 15 idle/8 WOT to 3 idle/ 0 WOT. The real problem was that is was sporadic - sometimes we could go for hours with good pressure and then it would drop to 0 for a few minutes and at one point for a full hour of driving.
We were in South Idaho at the time and I was real hesitant to run this way through the hot deserts of Utah and Nevada so I started the search for a dealer to help on Friday afternoon. Most dealers knew of the problem and had the pump in stock, but none of them could help me until Monday at best, so we continued down the road with sporadic pressures. When I fired the truck up Saturday it was idling at 3 end never jumped up, so I found the local dealer in Utah and gave them a call at 9:00 Saturday - a long shot at best !
Barber Brothers Motors in Spanish Fork was the dealer, and they had thier diesel tech in that day, and they had the pump. But of course when we showed up the pump was pushing a good 15 psi at idle and the tech looked at me like I was nuts. After I told him what we had been seeing he let it idle for nearly an hour and the pump finally showed its problem when it settled at 3 psi for 5 minutes. An hour later we were on the road again with a new LP.
One thing I found interesting. The tech said that DC is now looking at volume during the startup cycle rather than pressure to indicate a bad pump. The threshold is 48 oz during a "bump" or startup cycle, and my LP was pushing only 39 oz. He claimed that DC is giving the dealers a real hard time on the LP replacement which is causing the dealers to be sure or be charged back. Kind of disheartening when DC knows this is a real issue.
Sorry for the long post, and know I will be one of those guys with an LP in the toolbox.
BTW - my truck had 22k miles when the pump failed.
Damon
We were in South Idaho at the time and I was real hesitant to run this way through the hot deserts of Utah and Nevada so I started the search for a dealer to help on Friday afternoon. Most dealers knew of the problem and had the pump in stock, but none of them could help me until Monday at best, so we continued down the road with sporadic pressures. When I fired the truck up Saturday it was idling at 3 end never jumped up, so I found the local dealer in Utah and gave them a call at 9:00 Saturday - a long shot at best !
Barber Brothers Motors in Spanish Fork was the dealer, and they had thier diesel tech in that day, and they had the pump. But of course when we showed up the pump was pushing a good 15 psi at idle and the tech looked at me like I was nuts. After I told him what we had been seeing he let it idle for nearly an hour and the pump finally showed its problem when it settled at 3 psi for 5 minutes. An hour later we were on the road again with a new LP.
One thing I found interesting. The tech said that DC is now looking at volume during the startup cycle rather than pressure to indicate a bad pump. The threshold is 48 oz during a "bump" or startup cycle, and my LP was pushing only 39 oz. He claimed that DC is giving the dealers a real hard time on the LP replacement which is causing the dealers to be sure or be charged back. Kind of disheartening when DC knows this is a real issue.
Sorry for the long post, and know I will be one of those guys with an LP in the toolbox.
BTW - my truck had 22k miles when the pump failed.
Damon
