The Under the Hood
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Dear Motor Medics, I have a 1988 Chevy truck with a 350 and manual transmission. I have 90k original owner miles on the truck and last year I rebuilt the engine from the ground up.
I was a machinist in my pre-retirement career performing race car engine builds. I worked with a younger local mechanic who has a shop and together we built it up some and added custom exhaust, a bigger cam, cold air intake, etc.
After all this, the truck went through three fuel pumps in the tank. The original and two more.
I am not a diagnostic guy so I had a local mechanic take a look and he says that the failure is due to me using 10 percent ethanol blends in my truck and that I should never use it.
Is this a real thing?
I have four other cars and two of them are even older with in-tank pumps and I have never had an issue with them and they have many more miles on them.
Jerry in Branson, Missouri
Jerry, The information that the mechanic has given you is not correct. Using 10 percent ethanol is the standard these days and has been for many years.
In our area it has been that way for over 30 years so if it was the issue, we would have seen many fuel pump failures. Knowing what we do about these trucks from our shop we would lean towards wiring or relay issues.
Take care, The Motor Medics
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