Life Expectancy of a Reman HPOP

slh said:

If you want worry free for a long time, I suggest looking into bullet proofing. I found out the hard and expensive way that these 6.0's have many problems. There is a lot of info out there on how to do this.

If I had to do it over...I'd run like hell! lol

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I have been researching 6.0s for about a year now. The truck (2003 CC 4x4) is in fantastic shape except for the lifter that decided it was done with this world. Anyway, the truck was given to me for free, so even if I put $5-6k in the motor, I am money ahead. I have been a mechanic my whole life, own a motorcycle shop and a small machine shop, but this is my first diesel experience. I am not worried. The motor is ready to pull now and I will be doing EVERYTHING to make it reliable and strong. I will not be throwing tunes at it or anything to make big HP as I only tow 6k lbs and this motor in stock form would be more than I ever need. BTW, I believe the lifter failure was caused by a completely plugged oil cooler and excessive oil temps. This will never again be a problem on my build as I am building a oil cooling and filtration system just like the commercially available ones with some slight tweaks. Also doing heads, EGR delete, nice (but quiet) exhaust, and a host of other upgrades along the way.

This one had 188k on the original cooler and it was plugged solid. But the block has enough surface rust in it that I just do not want to go down that road again. If you bought it new, religiously maintained it with coolant changes, you may never have the problem. But sadly, this is only a small percentage of the rigs on the road. Who regularly flushes coolant, brake fluid, etc.? Not many like us who do. I feel once the rust has started, the game is over. You will never be able to go back and have a forever clean engine. This is why I am going the route I am. No water over oil cooler, no problem if there is a bit of debris in the coolant. It is expensive if you have to buy it, or a bit of a project if you are building it like me, but I think it will be worth it in the long run for this truck.

I have a machine shop and I am extensively modifying the original oil filter housing for a feed and return line to bypass the internal cooler, then running through a pair of oil filters, oil temperature thermostat and large 32 plate fan cooled cooler.

I answered that above. You have an 03. The DieselSite pump or the CnCFab pump. If you don't care for that advice, then try your own and keep us updated once a year.

$676 is marginally over the cost of am OEM remanned pump. The minimal amount more would be eaten up quickly by a repeat job.


Personally, I have the money and wouldn't mind spending it on the DieselSite pump. I have kept up with a few users that installed it and they have a number of years under their belt with no issues. That said, the CNCFab pump is cheaper and also has a good reputation.

Several of the weak areas of an early 6.0L HPOP have been discussed a fair bit - going back to 2011. The only people acknowledging that changes need to be made in the original design are the two companies mentioned above. Their pumps have a great reputation with the forum people that have tried them.

If you don't buy into the hours and hours of following and researching the topic as a few of us have, then roll up your sleeves and start searching.

No problem. I have spent many hours on the topic and there are even a few good discussions going on right now that include a look at the internals of both the early and the late HPOPs. There have been a NUMBER threads on the early HPOP and whether or not an OEM remanned can be made to last or not. One shop owner on another forum has adamantly stated that he NEVER had one of his installed OEM HPOPs "come back". He attributes his success to proper priming of the HPO system before starting to crank. No doubt this is a VERY good idea, but there are design flaws with the OEM pump that I would want addressed. I also think that many of the failures could be connected to significantly over-heated oil, or debris-contaminated oil, or a lack of oil supply due to a tall aftermarket oil filter cap with a shorter OEM oil filter. So, all that makes it a hard topic to actually "nail down".

My view has always been that if I paid a shop quite a bit of money to install a part, and it failed just past the (say 2 year) warranty period ..................... then I would not be taking it back to that same shop! So unless the failure happened within the warranty period, a shop wouldn't probably see the true 2 yr + failure data. I expect a LOT more than 2 years out of an HPOP reliability!

As you are, I am very skeptical of the need for higher output from an HPOP.