Fuel pump failure on the 2002 Chevrolet Silverado
1 crash 1 fire 1 injury 3 of the 3 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When fuel pump failure gets reported
There are 3 reports of fuel pump failure on the 2002 Chevrolet Silverado, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 36th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 28,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a crash, 1 a fire and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $600–$2,600 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 12 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 900 miles, and latest on the 1998 at 130,000 miles.
By volume the 1997 carries the most reports, with 26; the 2002 has 3. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
Dt:consumer purchased vehicle and noticed that there was an anti-theft system as a feature and the dealer told the consumer that the vehicle did not have this feature. Consumer was driving in skokie a suburb of chicago, when the vehicle shut off and the consumer lost control of vehicle. There was no steering no brakes no control of any kind. All the lights on the instrument panel began to flash. The consumer was able to force enough steering so that she could merge off the road into a driveway and bushes that helped consumer bring vehicle to a stop. Consumer noticed a message that came up on message panel of instrument panel. Message read security, and consumer found later that owners manual said that this message was informing vehicle driver of a security lock, which means that the vehicle shuts down to keep from being stolen. When consumer was towed to dealer, dealer told consumer that fuel pump went out and this engaged the pass lock feature. Consumer feels this is very dangerous and could have had severe consequences. Dealer said the pass lock system could be engaged by other simple ways, like putting the wrong key in the…
On oct 13, 2004 my 2002 chevy truck, 2500hd 4WD crew cab, was struck head on by another vehicle and a fire was started under the hood on the drivers side. This fire was extinguished several times by small extinguishers but kept coming back until there was no extinguisher left. The result was the total distruction of this vehicle. My family and I and a friend (4) were in this vehicle and fortunately got out prior to the truck being totally engulfed by fire. We recognize that if anyone of use were pinned in this vehicle more than we were, we would not be here today. The truck was totally burned up in 5-10 minutes before the fire department arrived. We are concerned that there is no safety mechanism to shut down the fuel pump after a head-on collision like this one. Everyone I talked to told me nothing could be done because you were not seriously burned. Our injuries were miner compared to what they could have been if I could not have gotten out. I want to propose a sensor be added to recognize airbag deployment and then shutdown power or fuel. This will save lives for anyone less fortunate than my family. Does a life need to be…
Also reported on the 2002 Chevrolet Silverado
ABS module or sensor failure
Loss of braking
Other brake problem
Premature brake pad or rotor wear
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 3 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 3 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does fuel pump failure happen on the 2002 Chevrolet Silverado?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 30,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is fuel pump failure on the 2002 Chevrolet Silverado?
3 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed