known good fuel pumps/sensors/relay brand list?

jetski247

jetski247

Member
is there a sticky of known good working brands from rockauto, amazon and ebay?
also known brands to not last as long or perform like $#!(
search brings up more opinions than facts.

looking for the best stock fuel pump, iac, tps, relay brands etc......

ive gone through several cheap fuel pumps and even my dephi seems to be giving me issues, my iac lasted like 2 months before it started acting up, im tired of replacing cheap china crap. even the good stuff seems to be china knockoffs.

i ran the walbro 255 in my sti with no issues but i doubt i need that for this near stock truck. my stock fuel pump lasted over 15 years but im sure im buying old stock when getting another motorcraft
 
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This would be great information.

I've posted it elsewhere before, but 20 years ago, there was no way I'd pay twice as much for a Motorcraft part than a Dorman; now I'd pay 4 times the price for the opportunity!
 
well said brother@! you get what you pay for. every now and then you get a cheapy thats good old stock relabeled but thats far and few.

i had to put my motorcraft tps back on which was the original, to fix a lot of running issues and bucking and spitting. hooked up my meter to the cheapy vs motorcraft and the cheap tps values werent nearly as smooth as the motorcraft nor as accurate, i had to elongate the holes of the china to even get it close to the motorcraft. the voltage would jump up quickly and was erratic compared to the oem.
 
This is a tough question because a company that sells a good part today may not sell a good part next year and a company that made junk last year may be good today. I will almost always pay more for a Motorcraft part, even if it's 2-3 times as much. If I can't get Motorcraft, I go to AC Delco. There was a time that they only did GM parts, but now they do parts for everybody and do pretty well.

For fuel pumps, I usually get Airtex. I always had good luck with them when I was a pro tech. I avoid Carter electrics. Never had anything but trouble from them.

For most sensors I don't really have a go to. Borg Warner and Standard are typically OK. I avoid the house brands from the box stores. The exception here is oxygen sensors. If I can't get MC or Delco I get Bosch. My reason for this may be outdated these days, but I don't know. Bosch used to make almost all of the sensors on the market. I doubt that is the case today, but when they did the only difference was the quality control numbers. Just to pull some numbers from the sky for comparison, a Bosch sensor made for MC or Delco might score a 98 on a 100 point scale. Then the Bosch branded sensor might score a 95, and the others would be at 90 or below. Basically, the sold the OEMs their best stuff, then sold the next tier themselves, and sold everyone else the "junk" that didn't pass OE or in house QC standards.
 
When the original fuel pump died in my Crown Vic; I wanted to get the original replacement; but was unable to do so at the time. I ordered a Spectra pump from Rock Auto; and ended up getting a pump for a Country Squire (wagon version of the Crown Vic). Since I had been planning the engine swap; I took the rubber boot from the Spectra pump, took the original fuel pump housing apart, and swapped in the 255lph Holley unit I had just bought. Since the Holley pump is much smaller than the stock pump unit; I had to stuff it in a 1.5" fuel filler hose and cram that inside of the replacement boot; which slid inside the fuel pump housing. Ran that pump for years until we parked the car. I actually had it running late last year before I had unsolved electrical issues.

I don't know what the Lightning pumps look like; but you may be able to do something similar.
 
im sure i can stuff a walbro in there, ive stuffed other pumps in the housing with a little modification, but im sure i don't need the capabilites of that walbro for my setup.

if all we have are china choices, which china is the best? is it a gamble? the good stuffs gone, nothing but junk left? they all are made at the same factory just rebranded?

ive used a lot of acdelco in the past with very good results. they make a lot of stuff that fits our trucks, the last acdelco stuff i used were a set of spark plugs but not sure if ac delco makes theyre own, im sure theres not a bunch of spark plug factoreis out there, and i believe i still have a spark plug that i found that had ac delco and ngk on the same plug......
 
If you're stuck with China parts just get the cheapest one. They probably all come out of the same building anyway.

AFAIK AC Delco is still making their own stuff. They have also made it for other companies in the past and it's not uncommon for an engine to come with a non-ACD plug OE that is marked with both ACD and the company it was made for. That is how it is identified as an OE plug. On GM cars they put a white paint dot on the end of the plug where the wire connects to show it as OE. Every once in a while you'll get one out of the box with the white dot, but it's not supposed to happen.
 
Most Johnson Controls batteries come from just a few factories. But that doesn't mean a JC Ford/MotorCraft battery is the same as a JC DuraCrap battery. Even though they come from the same assembly line, they're different production runs, and built to VERY-different standards. Same for stuff that comes from chy-nah. There are MANY more production facilities there, and they can shift production faster than we can. So the fact that 2 parts are made in that country doesn't mean they're made anywhere close to the same. I'm happy buying genuine Ford/MC wherever they're made (and it's increasingly chy-nah). If I can't get that, I'll try to find the OEM and buy that brand. For fuel pumps, that's Bosch.
 
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