Chris Kouba
Supporter
I have an issue with my pumps whereby I've ended up burning them up. I have two bladders in the sponsons which feed a swirl pot (currently) via a pair of Carter low pressure (3-5psi) pumps. There are returns to each sponson from the swirl pot.
The EFI system (Edelbrock Pro-Flow) runs fine with the supplied pump when the swirl pot is full. Pump runs 90psi to the rails and has a return line to the swirl pot.
The entire system has worked faultlessly while the car has been stationary.
My issue- there are no baffles in the bladders, only foam, allowing fuel to slosh forward under braking when the levels start getting low. On a normal car, I would shut off the pump of the empty-ish tank and start using the other but the heavenly noise out the exhaust drowns out anything the dying little pump could hope to emit. I haven't been sensitive enough to detect when the damage starts but once the swirl tank starts to get low enough, I'll get a stutter when I give it the boot after hard cornering/braking.
To rectify in the future, I could make sure the sponson tanks never get below a certain level. This seems a little over-reactive to me but something I will definitely be sensitive to in the future. Specifically this time, I took a shot at figuring out my mileage and ran one tank (8 gal) down to what I thought was empty, and that's when I burned it up.
What I would really like though is to be able to run a pump which has a bit of tolerance to being run without fuel to cool it. Can anyone recommend something? I certainly can't be the only person who has had to deal with this. I have yet to hear of an electric pump which fits the bill though.
The Carter pumps currently on the car are solenoid pumps. I have read on the internet that vane pumps may be more sensitive to dry running and that gerotor pumps might be "better". Does anyone have any empirical data one way or the other?
Any constructive suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Chris
The EFI system (Edelbrock Pro-Flow) runs fine with the supplied pump when the swirl pot is full. Pump runs 90psi to the rails and has a return line to the swirl pot.
The entire system has worked faultlessly while the car has been stationary.
My issue- there are no baffles in the bladders, only foam, allowing fuel to slosh forward under braking when the levels start getting low. On a normal car, I would shut off the pump of the empty-ish tank and start using the other but the heavenly noise out the exhaust drowns out anything the dying little pump could hope to emit. I haven't been sensitive enough to detect when the damage starts but once the swirl tank starts to get low enough, I'll get a stutter when I give it the boot after hard cornering/braking.
To rectify in the future, I could make sure the sponson tanks never get below a certain level. This seems a little over-reactive to me but something I will definitely be sensitive to in the future. Specifically this time, I took a shot at figuring out my mileage and ran one tank (8 gal) down to what I thought was empty, and that's when I burned it up.
What I would really like though is to be able to run a pump which has a bit of tolerance to being run without fuel to cool it. Can anyone recommend something? I certainly can't be the only person who has had to deal with this. I have yet to hear of an electric pump which fits the bill though.
The Carter pumps currently on the car are solenoid pumps. I have read on the internet that vane pumps may be more sensitive to dry running and that gerotor pumps might be "better". Does anyone have any empirical data one way or the other?
Any constructive suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Chris