Melling oil pump m55(a) dangerous design change

Discussed this issue with Melling at length.

Here are the highlights for what it's worth. Hopefully some will find it useful.

1) The redesign was tested by both Melling and GM for fatique prior to release with no reliability issues.
2) Since being redesigned over 2,000,000 pumps have been shipped and sold.
3) Melling knows of 12 failures on these pumps following this redesign. One or two of them may be of the older design as they were never returned and conversations seemed suspect due to the estimated install date of the pump.
4) Applications under which the pumps failed have been soup to nuts, many appeared to be pretty hard core applications.
5) Melling is redesigning the pump not due to a statistically valid design issue but for customer service. This is currently underway.

The folks in the Melling booth were some of the best company reps we talked with all weekend. Top shelf company and the source for the best information on what will work for your particular application.

 

Dame F@#k#n engineers!!!

 

Don't be so quick to blame the engineers, no engineer likes to make thinks weaker. Blame the short-sighted bean counters, accountants, marketers, and managers. Engineers are asked to do the dumbest things sometimes.

Dilbert is a documentary, not a comic strip!

 

ok, the only thing i dont understand is this. why do they need to go back and redesign a bunch of oil pumps for the high performance stuff? why cant they jsut keep selling the old m55 pumps that worked fine???

 

I'm with you Dan. I'd love to kick the snot out of whoever's dumb idea this was.

Besides, other than crate engines, there aren't any OEM uses for these things anymore, so I'm struggling to figure out how this could ever be a cost reduction. Since the "select" pumps are still using the old tooling, they had to design and make the new tooling, run extensive tests to qualify the new design, etc etc etc. I don't see how it's a benefit to anyone except maybe to downgrade the standard product so that they can rape us when we realize we now have to pay $60 to get a pump we used to get for $15-20.

 

Look at almost everything being made today. It's all "less" in some ways than it was before. All in the interests of controlling cost. With the cost of scrap iron and raw pig iron through the roof most all manufacturing processes have been changed in some way to reduce cost.

 

what are the signs of a pump just starting to crack?

 

Pics of Melling oil pump M55 differences.

Here's a pic of my old M55 pump from my 80 Camaro, and the new one I got last year.

 

yay, im not paranoid enough mines been in there since 2001 , a melling M55HV
ah well, an excuse to go 383
per budget permits. nay..

 

if you put in before jan 04. you are ok. the change was not until about jan 04.