Well, the friends I met here at the RV park offered to take me on a trip to a nearby city next week (66 miles one way, but they have a lil 4cyl manual trans Kia Soul so it's not too expensive of a drive) to do a warranty exchange for the O'Reilly one, and also to drop off the Amazon one to a UPS store, so I don't have to pay the $8 return shipping. We have been going around to various national parks and monuments in the area this week too, so yeah. Awesome folks.
I already called the O'Reilly there this evening and they said yes, will honor the warranty, since I was able to verify it's a legit claim: Phone number? Name? When and where did you buy it?
Being 5+ years ago, they probably question if it's a legit claim. "Who keeps such an old vehicle for 5 more years?!"
They had to special order it so it won't be there until Tuesday afternoon (UPS delivery). They said they are going to eat the UPS shipping cost since it's a direct warranty claim replacement, so that's nice.
They mentioned I do have to bring the old pump in, as if that's not something people actually want to do. Yeah, I know, you want to have the old pump before you hand over a new $140 pump. It still has the part # printed on it, same as the one I called about, and I have the paper receipt so I'll that as a bit of extra ammo to prove that I did in fact buy it.
Who knows if it'll be any better than the one I got from Amazon, since the Amazon one is the same part number. But parts are a crap shoot... maybe I'll get a good one from them.
I'll just let the Walmart one come too, just in case. If the O'Reilly replacement is good, I'll just return the Walmart in a couple months without opening it. If the O'Reilly one is just as bad or worse, I'll try the Walmart one and then warranty the O'Reilly one again.
I think I'll gorilla tape my electric drill to the vac pump (without the pulley installed) to test it before I install it, so maybe I can see if it's pulling in ~25 psi. Or maybe I can use one of the threaded bits from my pulley installer kit to rotate the pump with the drill. The vac pump shaft turns clockwise just like the engine, if I'm not mistaken, if I'm picturing it right in my head with how the belts would pull it. I didn't think to look before I pulled the Amazon one back off this evening.