I thought I would re-title this thread in case it will help anybody in the future. I thought I had air in my HP oil system after installing a Bulletproof oil cooler, HPOP, and some other items. Soon after the repairs were done the truck died on me. As it turned out, this was not due to residual air. There was no HP oil, so the truck would not restart. I did see an occasional effort by the HPOP to put out a little pressure, but only enough to register ~65 psi on my scan software.

So I took it back to the same shop that did the work in the first place. They took the top end back apart after finding metallic trash in the IPR screen. Note this screen had been checked when the first (100K miles original) HPOP was replaced.

The mechanic found the replacement HPOP had shed this trash, as evidenced by his inspection of the HPOP internals. So he put another new HPOP in, replaced the IPR (just for good measure) and the truck runs fine so far. He is good friends with the parts manager at the local Ford dealership and it seems failure of brand new HPOP units from Ford has been seen before by the parts manager.

Just to be sure, my mechanic checked the lot code on the latest HPOP and selected one with a very different lot code than the first one he installed. Our suspicion is that there is a run of faulty pumps out there, and hope that it is confined to a single lot code.

So I post this update just to highlight the possibility that a brand new part from Ford, and a critical one at that, can indeed fail in short order. Also, I have to give kudos to my mechanic, because he not only correctly diagnosed the problem, but also did not charge me a penny to replace the HPOP a second time. I didn't even have to pay for the tow to the shop.

I knew that Ford would supply us another new HPOP, because the first one was only 3 weeks old, but I had assumed I would have to pay for the labor to R&R the HPOP. After all, nothing pointed to any error or negligence on the part of the shop doing the work - so why would they be liable for the labor to put another pump in? In todays world - where quality customer service is rare - it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that I would eat the labor cost. I can only guess that it took 6, 8, or maybe 10 hours to R&R the HPOP and everything around it. But the only thing I paid for was a new IPR, and that was "just for good measure" because the original one was 11 years old.

In short, I would not hesitate to recommend this shop to anybody in the area. Hope this is useful information for somebody looking for a good diesel mechanic, or encountering similar HP oil system issues.

Doug

 

No such thing as a brand new HPOP from Ford, only remans, but we all know what you mean.

Josh