Average life-expectancy of mechanical fuel pumps with vacuum booster ?

[Guest De Soto Frank]

Just had to replace the combination fuel-pump / vacuum pump on my '61 Rambler.

After bringing out of winter storage, I noticed fuel puddling under the engine, and sure enough it was coming out of the weep-hole in the pump body.

When I was disconnecting all the plumbing from the fuel pump, I noticed a lot of crankcase oil in the vacuum line to the intake manifold...

The pump looks like a fairly recent (last 30 years?) rebuild of an AC unit.

The presence of the oil in the vacuum line brought back to mind a comment I 'd heard an uncle make many years ago, regarding vacuum pumps and "how they'd suck oil out of the crankcase if the vacuum diaphragm went bad, and foul the spark plugs and cause high oil consumption", etc.

In the 1980's, my mom was running a nice 1962 Falcon with a vacuum-booster pump, and that car would go through a fuel pumps about once a year... always the vacuum section would fail first.

Was this a common thing way back when ?

I've seen single-action (fuel-only) mechanical pumps that were still working after 40 + years, but rarely had a combination-pump last that long...

And just to clarify, my experiences are going back before the presence of ethanated fuels was a factor...

Any graybeards have recollection about the lifespan of combination fuel/vacuum pumps from the good old days ?

Regards,

De Soto Frank

[Joe Block]

Make sure you get a modern kit for it, i suspect in the ethanol in the gas that the problem. ir an Gas-a-haul throught he packard in 1990, and lost the fuel pump a few days later, i been running on an electric every since.

[Rusty_OToole]

We used to figure 20000 to 30000 miles for a fuel pump in fleet service, about the same for generators and starters.

The vacuum pump should do less work, and last longer than the fuel pump if it is hooked up correctly.