Sparky's winter/spring/summer/autumn work

For as long as Ethanol has been a threat I have never left any fuel in any of my small engines - ie chainsaw, ride on, strimmer, hedge cutter etc etc
I always drain the tanks after use and then start and run them until they stop.
I have not had any problems, they all start when needed.
With cars if they stand for a bit I usually drain the tank if I can and put fresh in, then put the drained stuff in the lawn mower.
Regular inspections of filters is vital to avoid disappointment ;)
 
Good move, I might try that. Sparky's tank was empty and there was very little fuel in the system, so it wasn't the age of the fuel that had caused the problem.

I tried some 95 octane (Shell regular) and some 97 octane (Esso Supreme+) and allowed it contact with the hose, 20mm of it for 6 hours in the filter set up. This is the resulting before and afters.

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The regular actually seemed to be a little higher in viscosity, so had reacted very badly, while the Esso wasn't as bad, but still had reacted. This was only six hours :oops:

I have removed the pump and washed out what I could with some fresh 97 fuel. This is what came out

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Something dreadfully amiss here. I'll be cutting the hose apart to see what been going on in there.

I have found some fuel hose from a local auto factor and tried the same test on it. It didn't change at in 24 hours, so that's going in tomorrow.

The underside is now altogether and looks tidy to me :). I will be taking it really slow to start with, until I can get the exhaust sorted and the other strut in. Let's hope it all works.

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I have also removed the N/S rear upright from the box I made for the diff to sit in, and welded a bracket onto it with a triangular strengthening plate. Then using some M14 studding welded to a small piece of tube, I made up a stay bar to connect to the original pin on the crossmember. The rubbers are some spare rear shock bushes I found in the spares drawer. That sounds easy - but in truth it took weeks to get that bit right.

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That should do it, now where did I put the keys :cool:

Richard
 
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Yikes! That doesn't look good - i have also had bad experience with fuel hose from eBay - i bought stuff listed as R9 from Advanced fluid solutions to fit to my Landrover and a year later it had all perished and cracked, it was extremely dangerous and was on the verge of splitting open near the driver side exhaust manifold! :oops:

I now only buy branded hose from decent online retailers.

If the pump seems dead, try a quick pulse of power with the polarity reversed. This sometimes frees them off.
 
I really should work out how to change the date on my dash cam :)

 
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Hmmmm.....

Been on the M1, at 70mph, :). Everything seems fine, but the fuel pump is very noisy.

For reasons more complicated than interesting, I have removed the in-tank pump and fitted an in-line fuel pump instead. Flick the ignition on and it buzzes away happily (and quietly) for a second or two, then start the car and of we go. Then after a minute or so the noise starts, and I mean it's very loud. I can hear the pump in the car, on the motorway, with the radio on:(

The pump is a HP3017.1. Anyone know if this is unsuitable for any reason? Have I done something wrong? (It has a 12mm feed straight from the tank to the pump, 40cm x 12mm i/d hose from the tank, and in-tank filter. Intuition is suggesting that there is not enough back pressure for the pump - and it's over running, but that is just a hunch.

Anyone have an inkling as to why this is happening?

Richard
 
My car was initially setup the same way, and I also had issues with pump noise, but also noticed lean running too. I ended up reinstalling the cylindrical facet feeding a small aluminium swirl pot from OBP in the boot, which then feeds the efi pump. All has been peachy since.
 
I would mount the camera there again and do a hard launch on a dry road before driving too much further. I see you have deleted one of the lower stay bars and even on that little pull away in the building the diff nose moved up and the strap on the near side moved.
You may find you have a job keeping everything tight.
It may be camera angles, but the two lower stay bars that were there look to be running down hill toward the front, and with the bolted joints may allow the diff nose to rise under torque. And the strap on the nearside is also at an angle and not vertical which will also pivot as it is bolted together.
Did you rubber mount rubber mount the fuel pump.
 
Don't panic, all is not as it seems :)

I have completed some quite hard launches, but with the car outside the camera adjusts to the extra light so you can't see the diff as well. I have managed to break the back end loose and accelerate with the back wheels spinning, and off at an angle :D. Unfortunately, the camera didn't fancy recording that bit :mad:

I haven't deleted the lower stay bar; Sparky's booked in with the chap who made the exhaust system on Monday to see if he can re-route it out of the way. I am not going to be driving it daily with only the one stay bar.

The main hefty upper bracket, the two box sections bolted to the lower side of the diff, the two rear uprights and the front straps, make up a cage which the diff sits in. The cage is rigid, mainly from being bolted to the diff, top and bottom by eight half inch bolts. I could probably omit the uprights at the back and the fronts straps, but I just feel better from having them there. The movement you can see is the whole cage moving on its rubber mounts. The straps at the front won't be able to pivot anywhere.

The stay bars are mounted as far back as possible, and as low as possible in relation to the diff. Although the diff will be trying to go upwards at the front, at the point the stay bar is mounted, the main movement is forward i.e. it is trying to rotate around the drive shafts.

I will however be doing some more testing before I am fully happy with it all ;)
 
Oh appreciate the stage you are at and have nothing but praise.
I just looked at the clip and it reminded me of the time I drove Rover engined car with a live axle on leaf springs that had no tunnel and rear floor.
The axle wind up on hard on / off throttle was terrifying. The photos of the replica racer install that I forwarded to you a while back had struts going from the nose area up to the floor. I think that would be how I would go, with maybe some shock absorber type bushes for insulation.

With a major mod like this it will likely have many ongoing tweeks before you sign it off. Keep the pics coming.
 
Appreciate the input Mark :)

I am actually more than happy with the way it's turned out, but to be honest, the only part of it with any concern is the stay bars. They are mounted as far back as I could get them but if they show any problems during testing, I will look at remaking the lower box sections and move the mounting back towards the rear fixing bolt. This pic is of the diff upside down, so the mount could be just to the right of the left hand bolt where the white circle is, instead of the yellow one, where it is now. I may have to weld a bracket on though as the stay may foul on the forward bolt.

Upsidediff.JPG

Fuel pump is strapped to a custom made bracket (OK its a bonnet catch from the front slam panel ;) ) with some 6mm foam to cushion it. Then the bracket is rubber mounted to the floor using the old rubber mounts which used to hold the Facet. I have just flicked the ignition on and the pump fired up for two seconds, with hardly a noise at all.

IMG_5111.JPG

I might get a chance to have a play with the pump later, to try and work out when and why it gets noisy

Richard
 
My car was initially setup the same way, and I also had issues with pump noise, but also noticed lean running too. I ended up reinstalling the cylindrical facet feeding a small aluminium swirl pot from OBP in the boot, which then feeds the efi pump. All has been peachy since.

Is the swirl pot pressurised then? I've never used one so don't know why I need one or what they do.

Richard
 
Been busy today

I have been googling noisy fuel pumps, checking my work, and have come up with a few possibilities, some more possible than others.

I drained the tank - again - and the fuel looked pretty much ok. The bottle in the backround was from the last time I drained it.

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Google reckons that a noisy fuel pump can be covered in sound deadening as petrol cools them as it flows through. Tried that as I was taking the pump out to try and clean it anyway, and also I had noticed that the pump was connected to the 8mm copper pipe by a very short piece of R9 hose. I had the thought that vibration could pass through the rubber hose, only 50mm long, and cause noise by the copper pipe vibrating against the bodywork. Very unlikely but as I had the pump out, I just lopped 100mm off and fitted a longer piece of rubber hose. I then poured a small amount of fresh petrol into each end in turn and gave it a good shake. I didn't get any muck out and the petrol remained the same colour, so not much amiss there.

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If you check out post number 653, on the last page the 12mm feed in the sender unit shows that for a very good reason that I cannot remember I cut off the tube from the old main feed. This is now the return pipe and me cutting it off leaves it 10mm from the outlet pipe and filter. After reading up on swirl pots (Cheers Quagmire) the return on them is fed into the top to keep hot fuel going straight back into the engine. My return is 10mm from the outlet, so I decided to extend it. It did occur to me that the return under pressure may have/cause some bubbles, which could be sucked straight into the pump. I placed a bucket under the sender and undid the retaining ring, and found this from the lowest part of the tank?

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That did shock me a bit :oops: but not as much as the filter. I pulled some of it off and it appeared to be clumps of fine fibres, which had basically clogged the filter.

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Here is a very likely suspect. I cleaned and replaced the bucket then poured a litre of petrol into tank. It came out almost black and full of bits. I tried again, same result. So, out came the seats, rear parcel shelf, speaker, filler cap, breather pipes etc, and then the tank. I took it outside, gave it all a good flush out then all back in. Sender now looks like this -

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Rear seats are still all over the place but it did start, and I wandered off for a drive. Spent ten minutes getting the engine warm, then listened for the pump: Nothing, just the distant purr of a normal fuel pump. The noise does appear to have gone, and I will be cruising about a bit more this week and hoping it doesn't come back.

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What a palava that was

Richard
 
Although annoying, it's always a good feeling to find definite, visible problems like that.
Hope that does the trick!
 
Clogged filter will do it! any kind of starvation of fuel to the HP pump will make it noisy as it cavitates. So this is all from that fuel hose breaking down? What a pain in the a*se...
 
You may not be out of the woods yet.
Gates Ethanol safe rubber hose is two layered, only the inner is E safe. The hose you used to extend your sender might be the same. I would put a sample in a jar of fuel and see if the outer layer breaks down. If it does the extension piece will fill your tank with black bits again and clog the filter.
Do you have any old plastic fuel line that you can use for the extension, that wont get attacked.
 
Good call Jim
Submersible Fuel Line Hose | Fuel Line Hose | Engine Hose | Fluid Power | Gates Corporation

Richard from what I can make out that J30 R9 hose will not take being immersed in fuel.

Of course I may have miss read your post and you have already found the extension piece degraded and blocked the filter ?
If not how did the filter get so blocked ?

Cheers Mark, but I am not draining the tank again :confused:

The bit that broke up was some 12mm braided stuff from t'internet. It was just to connect the 12mm feed from the sender, to the new in-line pump. It wasn't under any pressure so I just got what I could at the right size. There does seem to be awful lot of debris from the 40cm length of hose though? I have replaced this with some R7 which I tested for 24 hours, and it didn't react at all. It's been there for a couple of weeks now and when took it all apart, it shows no signs of degradation at all.

When I first fitted the Hotwire system, I bought some R9 for the high pressure bits. The pump which came with the build kit was an in-tank unit which was easily broken into two parts, so you could mount the fitting plate on a convenient horizontal surface, and then make up a bracket or two to get the pump body to sit close to the floor of the tank. This wasn't easy on a P6 as the lowest part of the tank was quite a distance from the horizontal top bit. I used some 8mm copper pipe to connect the top to the bottom, with the R9 hose to join them together. The R9 in the picture below was under pressure, of around 40 PSI and has been in there since June 2016. I only changed the pump to an in-line version because the motion of the car in cornering made the pump waggle about in the tank, made worse by the fuel sloshing from one side to the other, and this made it difficult to maintain a seal, so the boot would often smell of petrol.

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It is a bit deformed but that was 2 1/2 years under pressure, so I'm not too worried about it causing a problem.

I did drive 24 miles today which took about an hour through traffic, and he didn't miss a beat. I went to see if the chap who built my exhaust, could modify it. He took this bit out :oops:

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I think this bit was responsible for some of the minor squeaks and rattles as I can't hear them now ;) and the second stay bar is in and tight.

I'm hoping that's all I need to do for now, as I want to go driveabout :)

Richard
 
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