Long story short, maybe.... Anyways, vacuum pump failed sometime last year, replaced with a dorman vacuum pump. Believe me I had no choice at the time, so replaced it with the mark of the beast brand. Everything was good for the first 3 months then the pod stopped sucking, lost brakes and a/c controls. Now this is for an E-350 7.3 van and unlike trucks the second the pump dies my brakes become a workout to stop. Anyways chuck it out to pos dorman, got another one and same story, pod died 2-3 months later. I tried a cardone unit, third time is the charm right? Nope! same problem pod failure. Decided to give the chain store pumps one last chance and tried a NAPA unit, lasted a little longer and what do you know.... Pod failure again, lost vacuum. So, now hear me out I know you are thinking, something is wrong with the van blah blah blah. I would tend to agree but its the pod failing each time. I've been replacing them with store pumps due to time constraints and there are no OE pumps left anywhere I've looked, all out of stock. So I had enough and decided to buy a factory pod as they can be found online from time to time.
This time I found a Linamar pod, I believe this was one of the OE manufacturers, these were made in Hungary and so far it has lasted the longest and has sucked the strongest, but now I've come to a different failure point. Now the Pod is fine, but the first pulley failed on me. Seized and snapped the belt in the middle of I-4. Took one of my old dead pumps, of the many which I had purchased before, and re assembled it using the Linamar pod, took a while to clean all the gunk from the seized pulley and it has been working, so far.

Here are some of the interesting findings I've found from dissecting all the previous pumps. So far all looked like normal pulleys inside, with the exception of one, one had a lot of metal glitter inside the oil, I assume it was starting to fail but the pod failed before it had a chance to fail and seize like the one that stranded me. Whats interesting to me is that all of them seem to leak after a few hundred miles of use. It seems to be coming from the front bearing, all of them have done this. So I assume what will happen next is, now that I have a good working factory pod, the pulleys will just fail as I described above, the oil will slowly leak out and seize the bearings. That's the theory I have regarding this subject. Another interesting point is that its not the the diaphragm it self failing, but the one way valves are somehow coming out of alignment, I also found several styles of one way valves being used by all the remanufacturers, and they look pretty garbage, with the exception of a version used by dorman, which looks pretty thick and well secured compared to the rest. I was able to "fix" two of the failed pumps by taking 2 of the most hefty looking one way valves and re-assembling them. The problem with these is that somehow they got pulled out of their staked position, which is held kind of like a rubber tip version of the clips that hold trim pieces, or abs sensors in their holes if that makes sense. Sorry its almost 2am and I'm fried. Anyways, Assembled one of the failed pods and it seems to be working, but I never tried to see how long it would last in the van, I will compare it to the Linamar if the pod fails, but I have my doubts.

I have been considering getting rid of the van just because I cant seem to make the vacuum pump last longer than 3-4 months, now that I have overcome an obstacle another problem arises. I wont give up that easy though. I managed to score and new old stock replacement part from 2006, its a Linamar part, same brand as the pod that has lasted more than all the previous after market pods combined, so I'm waiting to get it sometime next week and give it a shot and hope for the best. It was the last one too, so I really hope it ends the suffering for me.

A little background I run this van everyday and I do 50 miles one way so about 100 miles round trip give or take every day for 5-6 days a week. Which is probably why my failure rate is higher than some other people running dorman/cardone/napa pumps. Or I missed something, and am rambling Anyways thats my rant. Nothing beats OEM parts for these engines, so just go OEM if you can, I just had no choice til now hopefully. I will keep you all updated and time to sleep. Night!

 

Not really familiar w/ the van setup but gonna throw this out there anyway. How feasible would swapping to an electric vac pump, and either convert the pulley to just be and idler of sorts, or go custom routing and install a belt of the correct length?

 

Yeah I have no idea what this pod is you speak of. A part number or pic will help us understand.

What year is the van?

Vacuum pump to me is on the ps fender, providing vacuum to the HVAC controls and the ESOF system, if equipped.

 

The obs trucks had a belt driven diaphragm pump for vacuum so my guess is the pod would be the diaphragm portion of the pump and the pulley would be the hub or drive part. I've actually got one around here somewhere that came off the donor engine.

 

Yup, the vans have a belt-driven vacuum pump.

 

just my opinion, I would put an Electric Vacuum pump on it, and be done with it.

 

I have eyeballed about deleting the mechanical vacuum pump and using electric..
I've had one vacuum pump failure in 4 years/50000 miles.

But does it hold up with brake booster??
Is converting to hydroboost the only real option?

 

That many failure's points to maybe a vacuum leak causing the pump to work harder, bearing failure could be misalign belt or to much tension on the pulley from a small belt
how are you installing your pulley? Pressed or hammered in?

 

I had my a/c vent through the defrost for a while, I did take care of it by relocating the vacuum canister and ran a new line from the main line that runs on the engine bay. I did discover my original vacuum line was torn to bits where the one way valve meets to connect to the main controls, and was letting air go both ways. So I replaced it with motorcraft valve, re routed the lines and A/C has been working fine since, so i indeed had a vacuum leak, but a little before that and since that I have been using the Linamar pod without an issue, by pod I mean the vacuum diaphragm.

As far as miss aligning, I have been using pre pressed pulleys on the vacuum pumps, but now that you mention it, I will look into it, and as far as the belt being too tight, I was using an O'reilly black belt cant remember the brand, but I did replace it 72 hours ago with a Gates belt with the green backing HD belt. It did feel kind of tight, as I was barely able to put it in my self. I was like an inch of spare or so to slide it on the alternator, so I will take that into consideration. Am using the single alternator belt, so in theory it should be fine, but it may be too tight, I will keep fighting this for a while, but its been pretty frustrating. Worth mentioning is the fact that the vacuum pump the van camewith when I bought it lasted a little over a year and 50k+ miles, I wouldn't mind doing it once a year, but every couple of months its a pita, I was also using the same black O'reilly belt with that one. I have a brand new spare gates tensioner, but the one on atm felt pretty strong, I will check how it aligns and make sure that isnt an issure, the rest of the pulleys are also fine but will confirm for alignment, which sucks in the van, barely any space.

a little extra I forgot to mention on the initial post. The quality control on the rebuilt units is somwhat bad, 2 out of the 4 have had a pinched Oring, the one that seals the pod to the body, and one was missing the little plate that goes in between the body and pod, for whatever thats worth, thats the state we are currently in.

 

Come on now, we all know you can figure this one out. If a factory unit can't get it done try a pond pump. Of course the more I think about it volume, is likely more critical than lph. Sizing the reservoir will be the important piece of that puzzle.

 

I believe that I have a pump out in the garage from a parted E-450 that you can have for shipping costs. It came off a school bus with 130,000 miles on it. If you want, I'll check its condition.

 

Just want to update incase anybody else comes across this problem in the future. The new OEM pump solved all my issues. Cant beat OEM quality. I did end up using an aftermarket pulley on the new pum p, as it came without one. The original factory one was worn.I will admit I decided to install it on the new pump since it was "factory" and was lighter therefore less inertia on the shaft was my thought, although it was a looser fit when pressed in "I should have known better." Few weeks later it was so loose that it spun on the shaft of the new pump. It shredded some of the belt. Luckily I was able to limp it home for 45 miles, 3 part stores didnt have the parts, so I went for broke, being gentle with the gas pedal was key. The interference fit from the old pulley was too loose and it spun on the shaft, lucky for me the pressure from the belt kept it with enough friction applied to keep my brake assist alive and also prevented the pump from being shaft damaged. Learned a good lesson, so I hope my mistakes help[ somebody in the future. Has been over 15k miles since no problem. Thank you all for the feed back.

 

thanks for closing the circle on this, even though it does not apply to my truck its nice to learn something for friends who might.