Original fuel pump

[Ranger Magnum]

Looking for an original fuel pump for a ‘66

Thanks!

[blaroche]

There is currently a 3 port pump on eBay but at $475 it seems quite pricey. Is your car missing the original 3 port pump?

[Ranger Magnum]

Yes. My car has 49k miles, and at some point was replaced. It does not have the vapor return line

[Dan Szwarc]

I used to sell cores for $50-100, but now they’ve dried up. Even the rattiest pump from a parts car is worth $200 now with rebuilds costing $125 ish.

$475 sounds high because there are no alternatives at any price. Keep looking but save you money up if that’s what you want.

[papawayne]

And my mechanic wants to put an electric, in-line fuel pump in my car to "assist" my original 3 port pump. He claims to have already rebuilt it. "Easy peasey" he says. Wayne

[Lee]

Wayne, did you have some problem that made him suspect your mechanical pump?

[amaria13]

I installed an electric pump as a back up and use it mainly for cold start ups. I also have used it in quick spurts in hot bumper to bumper traffic. Tony Maria

[papawayne]

Hi Lee, I was, or still am suffering from what we used to call vapor lock. It's OK to get gas, but not to have lunch. After lunch the car will go partway down the road and stall. I keep a can of starting fluid in the trunk and after some hefty squirts I'm good to go again. Once it was the in-line fuel filter that did this. I changed it, and it may be time again. Occasionally the car will not even turn over. the ignition switch is brand new, but you know what brand-new means. It means good luck. Wayne

[Mike]

Since it's related, if someone still has the proper 3 port one are the rebuild kits you can get any good or are there certain ones to avoid?

[Lee]

Hi Lee, I was, or still am suffering from what we used to call vapor lock. It's OK to get gas, but not to have lunch. After lunch the car will go partway down the road and stall. I keep a can of starting fluid in the trunk and after some hefty squirts I'm good to go again. Once it was the in-line fuel filter that did this. I changed it, and it may be time again. Occasionally the car will not even turn over. the ignition switch is brand new, but you know what brand-new means. It means good luck. Wayne

Well, I’ve written about it before, but I could never get 100% reliability with the 3 port pump. The final solution that worked was bypassed mechanical pump, electric pump in rear, and a 3 port bypass pressure regulator at the carburetor (bypassing to the original return line).

In any event, I would not recommend running pressurized gas through the mechanical pump (but may be OK if you just use it for filling the carb bowl, or getting out of a vapor lock jam). While it will work, a ruptured diaphragm would fill the crankcase with gasoline pretty quickly. And if you use it only for emergencies, you need a one way valve around the electrical pump, so that the mechanical doesn’t have to suck gas through the restriction. That will only make the tendency to vapor lock worse.

[TonyC]

I'm no advocate of electric-pump conversions, except possibly as an emergency primer for vapor-lock clearing, as Lee indicated, or as an emergency fueler when the main pump blows a seal. I did use one once, last year, as an emergency contingency when the innards of my fuel pump gave in to the corrosion it suffered before the core rebuild of the engine. But I removed it when I rebuilt the mechanical pump.

Compared to past pricing, $475 is high. Considering the runaway inflation over the past three years, maybe not so much. I think the best alternative option would be to get a core off an organ donor and a rebuild kit off E-Bay, and rebuild the thing yourself. Although some build details are lacking in the shop manual, the fuel pump rebuild guidance is not lacking; anyone who can put together a Level-2 model can rebuild a fuel pump.

Nobody ever said that servicing these cars was cheap–not even me, and I've used just about every cost-cutting trick one could think of to revive Frankenstein. But you have an advantage I never had: Time. You have regular motorized conveyance, which reduces the urgency to get the clap-door revived quickly. So stick to doing it properly, as you do have time working for you.

---Tony

[Lee]

I see these on EBay listed as Carter M4195 (which is the correct PN) but the return line boss doesn’t appear to be tapped. Has anybody tried tapping that boss for pipe threads, and drilling a small recycle orifice? I don’t need one, but for the money, if I did, I think I’d be tempted.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/404607748494?v ... 4a5db32c24

[1Bad55Chevy]

I have never messed with one of these cars so this might be irrelevant, but has anyone ever tried a high temp insulated wrap on the fuel lines?

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/the- ... 08QAvD_BwE

[frasern]

Ohhhh those repop people are getting sneaky! that is a 2 port pump with a splitter fitting.
Here is the dis-assembled 3 port one off my '62, alongside a 2 port unit that was on my '66. Note that the return line is not just a small nipple, it contains a spring loaded valve (thermostatic vapour discharge valve).

Just thinking out loud, I wonder how many of those valves are faulty, and would that increase the risk of vapour lock?

[Lee]

Hold on to that valve, Fraser. I'll bet there aren't many left. At some point early in my ownership, I was experimenting with using a fixed orifice for the bypass...and I haven't seen it since.

I know the idea was to only bypass fuel once it reached a certain critical temperature, but I don't know if that temp was stated, and I don't recall anything in the manual about how to test it.

Chevy, yeah. I, and I'm sure many people have used insulation. But in my opinion, it is limited value with the mechanical pump. The feed line to the pump runs right along the top of the radiator, a great place for hot-soaking, and the best insulation won't keep it cool through lunch, like Wayne said. As soon as the mechanical pump starts sucking on that heated line...it just flashes into vapor. That why an electric pusher pump fixes that. It can just flood it with liquid gas and recycle it back through the return line and cools everything down quickly.