Water Pump Cavitation

cory151 · Oct 6, 2012

I contacted Diesel Tech in Hemet CA, about 1.5 hours north of me. The gentlemen on the phone was extremely helpful and more than willing to spend 20 minutes talking about trucks. As I was inquiring about labor costs pulling my cab to do head studs, up-pipes, fresh HP fuel pump since, as of yet do I not have use of a lift. I let him know I have not had one issue with the truck yet was just looking to do some preventative stuff having surpassed 100k.

They sort of asked me why I was wanting to do headsteads on 6.4 to begin with as the head bolts are so much more stout than prev years. The gentleman I spoke with on the phone basically stated that the majority of there time is spent on the 6.0 and have seen very few issues with the 6.4 "other than water pump cavitation issues which they do not have a fix for yet.

Other than running clean gold coolant and perhaps a coolant filtration kit it there anyway to stave off pump cavitation?

Big Angry Hillbilly · Oct 6, 2012

I would change the front cover to the new updated one that's supposed to alleviate cavitation. I can't confirm or deny if this works or not.

For the record the only tucks I've seen with the front covers eaten on them have been 450's and 550's. I suspect this is related to the higher rpm incurred with 4.30 and 4.88 gears. This is only a hypothesis however.

cory151 · Oct 7, 2012

Big Angry Hillbilly said:
I would change the front cover to the new updated one that's supposed to alleviate cavitation. I can't confirm or deny if this works or not.

For the record the only tucks I've seen with the front covers eaten on them have been 450's and 550's. I suspect this is related to the higher rpm incurred with 4.30 and 4.88 gears. This is only a hypothesis however.

I actually mentioned that to him thinking that its mostly an issue with the 450s and 550s, and he stated that it was defiantly not just the 450 and 550.

Go figure

Big Angry Hillbilly · Oct 7, 2012

I've seen it in a few 250-350 trucks but only one or two comes to memory.

I'm not really sure how the new cover design helps prevent it, it would appear to SLOW coolant output to prevent cavitation but at the same time this would hamper cooling system performance I would think.

This is troubling.