Well I figured out the noise coming out of the front of my truck, the water pump **** the bed. I was pulling into Home Depot and heard the awful grinding noise, then I could smell antifreeze and saw the trail of liquid behind my truck. I didn't want to risk trying to get it home and cook the motor. It hadn't over heated yet, soI just parked it and called AAA. That being said are these failing water pumps a Ford part issue? Is there an aftermarket pump that is better?

 

Sorry about your water pump, always happens at the worse time. You really should add your truck year, type, etc in your signature so others can have a base starting point for advice. Also, what mileage is on odo?

 

What, you don't have a crystal ball and can't read minds either?

 

I've always replaced with mine (3-4 now) (all 5.0) with a Gates plastic impeller pump & have had no 2nd failures as yet on my high mileage trks....
For the record: the only complete on road failure of a oem pump was very recently on 1 of my 16's @ 216,000 km's (134,000 milles) ....From what I see there seems to
be a consistent failure rate @ around 120,000 miles on Oem pumps.....
My 02 07,10, & 11 only got gates pumps when installing a newer low mileage engine as a precaution expense!! My 13 @ 364'000 (226,000 miles) is still Oem !!

 

Sorry, the truck is 2015 XLT 4x4 crew cab, 6.5. w/ 5.0. The mileage at pump failure is 67k

 

And the engine is a ___________????

 

Seems to be fairly common, albeit not to the point of saying ‘every truck will do it at xx miles’. There is a metal impeller pump out there, but I don’t think the actual root of the problem is the impeller - it seems to be bearing failure due to some other factor, possibly coolant intrusion past the seals.

I’m a believer in preventive maintenance. So my truck will just get a new pump with its next coolant service at about 75k (if it doesn’t fail first). A lot of vehicles with timing belts have this done when the belts are replaced, so I don’t feel it’s a big deal to just do, plus we have a lot of time cross country with a trailer planned next year.

I would be upset if it failed going down the road at the mileage yours failed. Glad you discovered in a parking lot vice the side of the highway. It is a little sad that Ford went backwards with these water pumps, particularly with the 5.0 motor. I finally replaced the water pump in an old ‘97 4.6 mod motor and it was still perfectly fine at over 200k.

 

I wouldn’t recommend that. Have you ever heard of the bathtub curve? The overwhelming majority of failures happen at the beginning and end of a product’s lifespan. Water pumps aren’t a maintenance item, and the overwhelming majority of pumps go to the junkyard with the rest of the truck after decades of use. Yes, we’ve seen some 5.0L pump failures, but the overwhelming majority of them have never failed. Remember that people often find internet forums because they experience problems, so the threads of FTE are biased towards the handful of issues instead of the thousands of happy customers.

You might just replace a good part that would last another 150K with a defective part that leaves you stranded. If it ain’t broke…

 

It’s common practice for a number of brands and major corporate fleets to replace wear items at set intervals. Toyota, Honda, Audi, and others all include the water pump as a replacement item (along with cam seals) during the 70k -100k timing belt services prescribed for many of their vehicles. Water pumps are also a common repair across almost all brands within the typical lifespan of a vehicle.

There is nothing wrong with waiting for it to fail (or not). And you’re right, there is a little extra risk of a bad new part (in the 0.0X percent range, but still), but with some known wear items there is also nothing wrong with preventive maintenance. For less than $70, I’ll probably only replace it once or twice over the life of the truck, and it’s minimal extra work. I can do that for a long time and never come close to the cost of one tow off the side of the highway. The way this pump fails is a wear failure and typically leaves people stranded. If it wasn’t, as you stated, it would have failed much earlier in the pump’s life. I would prefer the arguably lower probability of a bad new part to the likelihood of a wear part failing between 70k and 150k.

To each their own. If I was talking about a preventative transmission replacement maybe, totally different level of woah!

Back to the OPs question, reputable brands (including OE) seem to all have similar reliability in what I’ve seen out there. There isn’t much (any) true concrete data available. I wouldn’t do the cheapest pump when none of them are very expensive.

 

Yeah, but it’s a somewhat apples-and-oranges comparison. The reason for replacing pumps driven by the timing drive is the excessive amount of labor it takes to do the job. If you’re already paying a 6-hour labor op to replace the belt, it would make sense to replace the inexpensive pump while you’re in there rather than risking paying the same labor op months/years later if the pump happens to wear out. This is even worse for pumps driven by timing chains because of the consequences of a failing pump leaking into the engine oil.

But a conventional pump like yours is a relatively straightforward thing to replace. And because of the expected lifespan and infant mortality of new parts, you’re more likely to replace a good part with a bad one than save yourself any trouble. It’s not like you’re saving labor time by replacing it while you’re in there for something else. People would make the same argument for ignition coils as well, but I could show you dozens of threads where people replaced entire sets of coils and had misfire problems afterward. My ‘04 Expy has all-original coils that have shown no signs of failure. A peek at FTE from ten years ago would make you think this was impossible, and that they’d all have failed long ago.

Anecdotal tales of failure on an internet forum are a terrible way of judging component reliability.

 

My 2017 F150s water pump leaked a little antifreeze. It had 103,000 miles on it. So I replaced it. Old water pump never made any noise.

 

Ummmm, the engine is listed.

 

Well, it’s a 2015 F150 and no part is going to last forever.
Sometimes parts just go out when we least expect them to.
The OEM alternator on my 2016 F150 took a dump on me a couple of weeks ago and yes, it was at the worse time.

Just replace it with an OEM pump and move on.

 

It wasn’t when he posted. Look at the bottom, he even disclosed the reason he edited.

 

I had to replace the water pump on mine at about 103K miles or so. It never leaked. Just made this horrendous noise. I replaced it with a "lifetime" warranty part from O'Rielly's. A little under $100 I believe. It's not too difficult a job. I replaced one serpentine belt and an adjuster at the same time as well.