Fuel leak from top of gear pump head

[SquareOne]

(04-18-2021 )Shotgun74 Wrote:  I replaced the entire pump when my fuel pump leaked out of those exact same torx plugs on a new fuel pump that was a few months on the truck when I started smelling fuel in the cab & upon inspection you could watch the fuel pool up through those torx plugs. I wasn’t playing around with that pump possibly going out & taking the motor with it. My way of thinking was if it’s leaking there what else is weak in the fuel pump that would rear it’s ugliness in time. Thankfully the fuel pump was still under warranty & if it wouldn’t have been I still would’ve replaced it.

Good luck on what you decide.

While I agree that whatever the truck needs, it should get (it is our livelihood after-all), I don't believe I'll replace the whole pump if this doesn't work. The head certainly, but even as overly maintenance oriented and cautious as I am, I don't see the need to replace the main portion of the pump without issue. I've been inside the pump at the 250k mark and once again just recently at the 450k mark, both times replacing the guts and inspecting the lobes carefully with no sign of wear much less any damage.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the large majority (if not all) of failures due to the 'breaking down' of the lobes, rollers, and old ceramic plungers running throughout the lube system? In another post from a couple years back I even challenged if it really was the ceramic (on the older style) causing the issue or if it was just a secondary effect of the main issue , which IMO was the old style roller pins failing. My theory was that the older style roller pins failed causing erratic behavior between the roller and lobe, thus causing degradation between the 2. The erratic 'chattering' would then lead to the destruction of the ceramic plungers....plungers get the blame, but the rollers were the primary culprit---again, just my opinion. As a side note, the updated components had different plungers and DLC coated roller pins(Unilevers knew more about this) as an update. Any older style fuel pump failure pics I have seen have the roller pins destroyed.

Again, not saying there's anything wrong with replacing the entire pump, just don't see the need to given what we know.