33 Coupe Adjusting and Tweaking 9        4/16/08

The day is now Friday, crunch time for my T fitting to arrive and rebuild my fuel lines. I didn’t know which freight company was handling the delivery, be it UPS, FedX or the post office, and the guy at Summit told me that I couldn’t track it with any number like you can with most orders (because of the drop shipment). I did know that UPS didn’t have it so now I was waiting for either FedX or the postal service to deliver the mail. At about 2:00 pm, I noticed the mail was being placed in my mail box so I rushed out to take a look. As luck would have it, there wasn’t any fitting…figures.  

It was time to make do with what I had so I worked many hours installing some of my old fuel system along with some new stuff too. I also had to reconnect my fuel line that goes to my gas tank because I had removed it earlier. In the process, I got a "gas bath" like you wouldn't believe because the fitting wouldn't screw on. I kept at it till it finally threaded on and by then, I was covered in fuel. I know one more fitting that I’m going to order soon, a fuel shutoff valve. It will be placed under the car as it comes out of the gas tank. Once I cleaned up from that mess, I detailed the car because Larry and I were going to leave at six in the morning and I had a little extra time (7:30pm).  

The next morning, I got up early, got everything ready well before 6am and was in my car waiting for Larry to arrive (excited like a little kid on Christmas morning) and once he finally rolled up, we hit the road. We got off the freeway (well before the 60/91 interchange so we could avoid that big mess) and took some side streets to the show, like we did last year. A few miles from our distention, my car quits running and noticed I had no fuel pressure. I flashed my lights at Larry to let him know that I had problems, but he kept on going right out of sight.  

If you remember a couple of weeks ago, I had the same thing happen on my way home from a different show. The reason the car quit then was because it blew a fuse that went to the fuel pump, and after replacing it with one from my turn signals that night, (15 amp) I was good to go again. Now I've never had any fuel pump problems before, but this was a brand new unit from Holley that I put on at the beginning of the year. The reason I bought a new one was because it was suppose to be quieter. I guess it is a little bit, but not as much as I thought it would be.

One of the things I did while I was working on the car the day before was put a larger fuse in place of the old one (from a 15 to a 20 amp) for insurance just in case this new pump was pulling a few more amps. I wasn't just shooting from the hip here because I checked my wiring diagram to make sure the wire size was large enough to handle the larger fuse. And because some of the other circuits had the same wire size with 20 amp fuses in them, I was confident that things would be fine.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder what happened. Once I pulled over, I checked the fuse and sure enough, that was the problem. I put in a new one and the car ran again...but only for about one minute and it blew that one too.

While I was coasting to an intersection, Larry had turned around and followed me as I was pulling over again. When I told him what happened, I decided to put a bigger fuse in (from 20 amp to 30 amp) to see if I could make it the rest of the way. I knew this was a bad idea, but I was desperate at this point. Once I turned the key, the engine came to life....for about 10 seconds and then quit again. Right then I knew my day was over and told him to go to the show without me. As he drove away, I was so disgusted I couldn't see straight because this was one of the shows I really wanted to be at.  

I ended up calling the auto club and told them I had a street rod that was very low to the ground and that I would need a flatbed truck to haul it with. About an hour later, the guy shows up and we were ready to load it. When he looked at how low it was and really no place to hook too (without damaging the body), I told him that I might be able to drive it on if I put in my last fuse, but I didn’t know how long it would run for. I started the car again and as I was inching my way forward, the driver guided me on, stopping and starting me as he put boards under the front tires as needed so my front-end would clear the ramp. Between the both of us, I was able to drive it up on the flatbed pretty easy. Now that the car was on the truck, I started thinking how long the car might have run if I was driving it.

Now that I was on the truck safely, I shut the engine off and the driver started to move the truck bed into position for my ride back home. Once the bed moved forward, I thought my car was moving and I mashed on the brakes, really hard. When my car didn’t stop, I figured out that it was just the truck bed moving, not me. I never did let the drive know what I did because it was embarrassing. And I did it a second time when the bed moved that final two feet too. Duh!! 

It was time to secure it to his truck and I noticed the huge hooks and chains that he was digging out so I asked if he had any straps instead. He said “yes” and when I asked if I could hook everything up, he agreed again, so I got under the car and did the delicate part. And I didn't mind crawling around under the car because I didn’t want the car damaged, but do you know how dirty those trucks are? Damn!! The driver told me that he’s towed some really low Porsche’s before, (good thing he’s been down this road before) which made this easier than I thought.  

On the way home, my daughter called to let me know how her trip back to Washington was going. She had been on the road for 13 hours at that point and she said they got a flat tire and needed two new ones. Then she asked me how the show was going? I told her that it must be a bad day to travel because both of us had trouble.

 

 

 

When I finally got home I started the car but it died right away so I had to push it into the driveway (with the drivers help) and then coast it into the garage. I took everything out of the car (that I take to every show) and put it all away. Then I came back out after an hour or so and put it up on jack stands. Once it was ready to be worked on, I flipped the car off and went in the house. 

The following day, I had settled down enough to start in on my wounded car (and pride), because my plan was to check out two things, the pump itself and the wiring that goes to it. I didn’t think the wiring would be the problem because the pump would run for a short time (20 – 30 minutes when cold) and then quit. If there was a short in the wire, it should have blown the fuse right away, I think?  

All the wiring in the car is housed in convoluted tubing and after pulling out about five feet near the pump, it looked like new so it was on to step two, draining the gas tank. After getting another bath of 91 octane, I removed the pump and started checking it out.

I noticed that it had two socket head cap screws on top so I remove those and pulled off the top. The first thing I noticed was a nasty smell, the kind that only burnt electrical has (if you’ve ever smelled this before, you’d know what I’m talking about). The cap had a bearing and some brushes in it but so far, things looked fine.
 

 

 

After removing more of the housing that revealed the armature, now I could see a problem, broken wires and parts lying at the bottom. Hot damn, the smoking gun. Well no wonder I had electrical problems, most of the armature is laying at the bottom of the pump.
 

 

 

Just another picture of my new Holley fuel pump that lasted only five hours.
 

 

 

I carefully put the pump back together and then called Holley to let them know what I found. The tech guy asked me how long I’d owned it, and I told him longer than six months (and the warranty is only 90 days). He told me to send him the pump, a copy of the recite and he’d send me a new one if it checked out bad. This was good news but to be honest, I think I’ll just use my old one. If Holley does send me a new pump, I plan on selling it because being stranded and towed sucked so bad, I don’t ever want that again. And I know that anything electrical or mechanical can and will fail eventually, it’s just the idea of this model giving up so soon that bugged me.

Oh, I almost forgot, the T fitting came in the following Monday.

 

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14