Are Vaico fuel pumps known crappy?
 

Replaced the 40 year old Pierburg mechanical pump with a Vaico brand. They claim to be a German aftermarket manufacturer, but I heard that they're made in China.

Anyhow, I'm getting oil seepage out the weep hole. Brand new pump. Do you guys have any experience with them? Is it possible for the fuel pump to somehow suck out oil if they're bad? Is is worth asking for a replacement or just chalking up to "lesson learned" and forking over $200 for a Pierburg? Or should I do away with the mechanical setup altogether and install an electric pump?

What's the best course of action for long term reliability? I have a Weber conversion in the mail as well, so I'd like to address the pump and forget about it.

Never heard of Vaico, but Pierburg isn't exactly known for their quality components either (in the VW world, at least).

IMO there is not much made in China that is quality. I bought some LED christmas lights on Ebay from China and they exploded and almost burned down my house!

So when your Pierburg went, did you guys convert to electrical or put another one in?

Vaico is a German parts repackager. Some of their stuff is OEM, relabled.... Most is Asian crap. German law allows someone to claim "Made in Germany" if something was value added in Germany... So a Chinese part gets put in a box in Germany, it's technically made in Germany...

FYI. I just purchased a Vaico subframe bushing kit for W124. The main label mentions VIEROL AG (possibly a parent company). There is a small, separate sticker that says "Made in China". The Vaico rubber items have no OEM part numbers marked on them, like the genuine OE rubber items do (I bought the OE stuff last time for $$$$ so I know what those look like). Also, the Vaico mounting bolts have barely one thread with a thin smear of blue stuff which is supposed to be threadlock, unlike the OE bolts which have fully half the threads completely coated with threadlock. As a bonus, the thin blue line on the Vaico bolts begins about where the threadlock on the OE bolts ends.

I'm not installing them on my car... already ordered a Lemforder kit instead (had to do some part number interchanging, which is why I didn't find Lemforders the first time). The quality may be OK (other than the threadlock issue, which is easy enough to remedy) but I don't feel like being a guinea pig, especially when the OEM Lemforder items are the same price. You can usually spot the junk (Uro, APA, FEQ) by the pricetag, often half as much as the OEM aftermarket parts. Not so with Vaico. The price was almost identical to Lemforders. Go figure.

YMMV, etc, etc...

:nuke: