If you haven't taken steps to prove that you didn't disassemble the pump (and mess with it), or the pump doesn't have anti-tamper parts, just the fact you have it in your possession puts the condition open to question. Just something to think about.

 

I'm with Crazy & Rick - I started this thread because I - and others want to know about the pump & fuel system - and what happened here.
I DON'T think Rick's attitude created this problem so I was interested in the pump diagnosis.
So - although many here want to be helpful -let's leave politics/repercussions out of the forum & maybe we can see the facts.

If the thread crosses forum rules then I'll ask Crazy to close the thread because the person that would get hurt would be Rick & possibly FTE

So please keep it cool & let's support Rick!

 

I apologize about the legal reference I was not trying to imply someone should take legal action only that it appears someone has not covered all the bases so to speak.

Anyway i speak from personal experiance you cannot prove contamination from looking into the suction or discharge of a pump. It has to be taken apart components need to be looked at. I have seen some brief 3D animation on this style pump so it appears to a piston driven pump that is acuated off a gear that rotates a lobe that causes the pistons to pump and build pressure. There also appears to be some kind of internal bypass valve that opens and closes to regulate the pressure on the fuel system. Now that being said this pump needs to be inspected for things like a bent connecting rod or what ever connects the piston to the lobe. Is it bent? Someone had mentioned a roller under a shoe or at the base of the piston. Does the roller or shoe show metel to metal contact? This could be from contamination with water because of the lower viscosity
which exceeded the PV limits of the roller or it could be because the bypass failed to operate which over pressurized the pump, at these pressures it would
only take less than a second to cause damage that could be catastrophic or
get woese over time until failure. I equate this to someone who is replacing a
ball bearing. During assembly the bearing is dropped on the floor, mechanic
picks it up and installs it anyway not know they have created a spaul or dent
in the out race. As the bearing runs everytime a ball hits the dent it gets a
little bigger and bigger until failure. Everything i just said is hypothetical but
that is why it needs to be disassemble. Which came first the chicken or the
egg. Sometimes you just can't determine a failure in that case we (the
company I work for) always gives the customer the benefit of the doubt.

 

subscribing

 

Pump Doctor. Amen Brother. There is alot of things that can cause a major failure. and you put it spot on. By turning a pump over or not able to turn it over, cetaintly cannot be diagnosed as to what caused the failure.I wanta see the guts of it all.But i do understand the position it could put Rick in. so it is still like finding a needle in the haystack.

 

No connecting rod to the piston... It's more like an over head roller cam, if there was such a thing. A roller resides in the bottom of the piston that rides the cam surface. On top of the roller is a "Hat" or a "foot", coated with a hard substance, that on one side, gets driven by the roller and the cam, upwards, and acts as the driver upwards, into the bottom of the piston, which is then connected to a plunger rod and a plunger bore. The piston is guided in an aluminum bore, the plunger resides in a hardened steel plunger bore, maybe 6 or 7mm in diameter.

 

HDSlider

Your right it is easy for us to play monday morning quarterback for Rick. No matter what he deciedes to do everybody regardless of their opinons should respect his decision in how far he goes with this situation.

Ninerbikes

Thanks for the better explanation I couldn't really tell in the 3D animation exactly what was what.

 

The pump is apart...I see no rust...cam is trashed...rollers are badly pitted and scarred...I had to drive the pistons out of the cylinder. It got dark before I could take any pictures. I will say this, the damage is very similar to the pump damage shown in Ninerbike's pictures. The following rollers look identical to the picture showing them sitting in position in the saddles of the piston. They are still cylindrical in shape though. The pistons are similarly damaged but not as severely scored as the ones in his pictures. The cam is trashed...beat to death...but I still do not see rust...and rust was the reason given for warranty denial...

At this time, it sure looks like the failure path described by Ninerbike has been repeated with the pump in the 6.7. The parts look identical to his pictures. But what do I know...

How many of you know how much water it takes to turn on the WIF light? Trust me, it is likely a lot more than you think.

I am very busy tomorrow so pictures will not make it to FTE until Sunday or Monday.

Regards

 

I'd be pretty damn busy too if my truck was down in a Ford shop, supposedly under warranty for repair, for 6 weeks. Playing catch up for lost time is pure h#ll. Sorry it went down that way, Rick, get to it when you can.

The pictures should tell a fair story if it was water damage... there better be some rust in there, otherwise it's time to call a spade a spade. If all you see is galling, scoring of pistons, etc, and metal debris /swarf... that a magnet won't pick up or attract, then it's aluminum and most likely bore failure/seizure.

 

subscribing

 

Rick . . . . . Did the Ford techs say that they actually found corrosion or rust on the pump itself? Did they find rust elsewhere in the system? Or did they find the damaged pump and water in the fuel system and jump to the conclusion that water in the fuel system caused the pump to fail? Ford must have some technical justification to go from “water in the fuel system” to “pump failure”.

I am not a metals expert, but I think that it would take a metals expert or a pump expert to definitively say that water in the fuel system caused pump failure. You would think that Ford would rely on one of their engineers (or supplier’s engineer) to determine the root cause of failure.

ken

 

Be interesting to see the pictures when you get them Rick. Just my thoughts, you may have received a Sunday pump that made it through quality control. If the pump has hardened or anodized parts, you would have to send the pieces out to a lab for analysis.

 

Ninerbikes

What is the material of construction for this pump? I keep reading things like rust, hardened or anodized. What in the pump would be rusty? Aluminum dosn't rust. What is the metalergy of the springs. Are they 300 series stainless a Hastiloy or something else? What is hardened and why, there is no need to hardened a material to pump diesel fuel. I would say in my 15 years of experiance with rotating equipment i have never came across a need to hardened a material unless it was pump something abrasive in nature. Diesel is not abrasive it just does not have good lubrication properties and there is a huge difference. Water has absolutely no lubricating properties and the only thing worse than water is hot water. Pressure creates heat. What we need to understand here is that when you are using a positive displacement pump that relies on the product in this case the diesel fuel, to lubricate its internal parts the proper viscosity, pressure and velosity of the product between the parts is cruchel. Know I' not say this next sanario happened but lets say this pump is producing pressures around 18,000psi. That is 18,000psi pushing back against the internal parts. Know lets say the pump is working properly with good clean diesel with no emulsified water. The diesel viscosity is good and the internal parts ride on the thin film of fluid they have to to have to stay happy. Now and again I'm in no way saying this happened but at some point either the tank gets low or somebody goes down a dirt road or something cause the fuel to be adgitated in the tank where if any water for then be emulsified with the fuel. Even if it is a minut amount that was not detected by the monitor and allowed to travel thru the system to the pump. If it reduced the viscosity enough and increased the velocity of the fuel between the moving parts enough to exceed the PV limits of the roller,shoe or any other internal parts you will get metal to metal contact. At 18,000 psi it would happen in miliseconds. People can say I've owned diesel trucks for years and never used a lubrication additive and I'm not useing them now. I say in these times with corporate greed I'm not relying on the oil industry to give me the addatives my truck need to operate correctly. I use a good additive that lubricates and demulsifies the water in the fuel.

 

I'll hazard a guess that the original servicing dealer tech claimed rust was found in another part or parts of the fuel system. That led them to the conclusion that enough water was in the fuel that it lowered the lubricity of the fuel causing the HPFP failure.

The remaining parts of the fuel system would need to be inspected to see if that was true and if it was a significant amount of rust. If it was a defective HPFP then we would need to know what other 6.7 fuel systems look like internally after XX miles or months. Do the 6.7 fuel systems all show a bit of surface rust or discoloration? Have any of the Techs on this site seen a 6.7 fuel system after XX miles and seen any rust or discolored metal? That would be interesting to know and especially interesting to see.

 

Subscribing.
And adding a thought.
It seems, to me, a bit short sighted to design a part that will fail so easily if it accidentally processes a bit of water.
I'm no engineer, but have spent 30 years repairing engineers mistakes as an auto mechanic and sometimes it just makes more sense to make the housing out of iron, or design the cam and rollers with adequate hardness to take some "abuse".
I hope this is not a distraction from the topic of the thread.