Hi there race fans. In the last installment I foolishly made the comment:
The problem is that it only manifests itself on the track and its a bit
hazardous
to test on the road.
HA!
That day, when I returned to the car, the newly-installed electric pump
was hammereing like mad! Hmm, must be low on fuel again; gauge was showing
1/4. Oh well, I'll go to the service station on the way home. Drove about
300m onto the main road, then ph-z-z-z. No gas, no go. Eventually, enough
seeped through to get going again. Not for long, about another 400m. No
amount of coaxing would get it to start, so out with the yuppie-phone and call
home. Son was there with a friend, so down they came with 5 litres of Super.
Poured it in, and the engine started; friend departed. About 500m further on,
fire went out again. Next-door neighbour happened to drive by; "Are you OK?"
NO. So she went off and brought another 5litres. This time I made it to the
service station and filled up. Got home safely, so the next day chanced it
by driving to the station again, this time with my wife following in the M*z*a.
It was fine, and got home ok too. I had a few days off, with a REAL case of
shipwrights disease, ie renovating my 20+ year-old yacht (but thats another
story).
On the way to work yesterday, it coughed and spluttered, stopped, eventually
restarted. I got it to the service station, and told the guy, 'there's a fuel
problem, check out the pickup from the tank'.
When I picked it up, he said, 'well we drained the tank and couldn't see
anything wrong with it'. I drove home and it seemed OK, at least the electric
pump was shutting itself off. I then went to go to my ocean navigation course.
Got about 1/2 mile from home and it conked out again. Out with the yuppie-phone
and called my wife. We tried jump starting it, but there was no sign of life.
For the first time since I've owned the car, it was ignominiously towed home.
First thing I did was to remove the rubber hose from the outlet. A bit of
petrol
slowly oozed out. Next was to remove the metal pipe - petrol gushed out until
I was able to screw a bolt in. Turns out the pipe was severely clogged. The
application
of a piece of wire from both ends, with vigorous twisting, pushing, pulling
finally
cleared the obstruction, some small pebbles. Reassembled the lot, and
everythings fine
(until the next lot gets washed into the pipe).
I'll have the tank removed and split, so I can be sure its completely clean.
Then I'll put a T-piece in the tank and run two separate lines: one to the
machanical
pump and one to the electric, with both meeting at the reservoir feeder for the
carbies.
That way, the electric will act 'on-demand', when the mechanical pump can't
keep up.
paulr
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