Hello Again Hamb'ers! So I've got to ask this question before the wife gets home and we do our Valentine's Day song and dance. I installed an inline fuel filter (cheap plastic ones) as a band-aid aftere I replaced my fuel tank with a new one. First start up did exactly what I thought it was going to do, coughed up some poopy gas and a shitload of debris into the filter. Ever since then it has started after a few turns. Today it was 42 degrees so I took her (the 52) up to the gas station to see if the new sending unit was working properly before I fill it with 16 gal. of gas and find out I have to drop it again. Side note, new sending unit did NOT work so I think I'll have to run a ground wire and troubleshoot. Anyways, in the 2 mile round trip it ran fine. Upon arriving home and checking for any leaks under the hood, I noticed that the amount of fuel coming into the filter was very slow. When I would rev the motor a bit it seemed to speed up alittle, but never enough to fill the filter. After shutting it down, I noticed that the filter would stay completely empty? It will fire up again after more than a few cranks and run without issue at idle, but the filter was always near full of fuel when I let it idle before driving. Has anyone ran into thiss issue before and what can I do to troubleshoot it? I've read about the fuel pump starting to fail, the diaphram being clogged and not pulling enough vacuum to have fuel runnning strongly to the carb. I'd like to get it running soundly before I start pumping money into lowering it and putting full new exhaust on it. Thanks again guys and treat your ladies right tonight! Both cars and women! How full it was before when not running.
Did you replace the gas cap when you replaced the fuel tank? You may have gotten a cap that isn't vented letting air into the tank to take up the space the gas took while you are driving. If it doesn't vent it creates a vacuum and the car quits after the vacuum in the tank is to a point were the pump can't overcome it anymore. The more fuel in the tank the quicker it dies. If you drove a ways to the gas I walked a mile to a gas station over that same thing. Other things might be a kinked hose or crushed or twisted line close to the tank. It might be time to change the filter too if you haven't changed it lately. I used to have to carry several of them as they were always plugging up on one rig I had that had too much crud in the tank. Changing the filter would be cheap insurance anyhow I always put a filter between the tank and the pump on my rigs as I have lost at least one fuel pump when I got crud in it on a road trip.
It's not unusual for a filter housing to be partially full, the only thing that really matters is that the fuel level in the carburetor bowl stays at minimum specification at all times under all conditions. Idle is one thing, steady cruise or full throttle acceleration is another.
The gas cap is the original cap. So my assumption is that is it allows it the vent correctly being it is factory. I went through and checked all the lines to make sure nothing was twisted or kinked. This filter has only seen maybe 20 mins of run time on it, but as I said previously the first time it ran again it coughed up a bunch of residue. So I’ll try swapping out that filter again until I run the new hardline. See how it goes!
I just find the fact that it’s completely empty when I shut the car off, whereas before I drove it and only let it idle it was damn near full after I would shut the car down. That lead me to believe maybe some more residue made it’s way to the fuel pump diaphragm and that’s why it’s pumping so slowly. I gave it a little juice leaving the station, but nothing too crazy as it’s been well below freezing and it sits in cold storage. Only start it when it hits 40ish and above. Still working out kinks as you can tell! Thanks for the input though. Any and all helps.
Hi I put a plastic inline filter on my 30 coupe with chevy small block and you could see the top plastic expand with every pulse of the pump so I went and replaced with a steel one. No more expanding. Don't trust the plastic ones. jmo Dave
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