Write-Up: Fuel Pump/Tank Sending Unit Replacement

matt270avian wrote:

charlieRobinson wrote:

dude, youre going to absolutely love it. weightless intercooler. god fuel, srsly. I still cannot make 1 degree of KR.

make sure you get the fuel tank gasket too. Mine seemed fine but the book says to replace it.

According to RockAuto this one comes with the O ring. Hopefully it will even though I ordered from Amazon...

Nice! I followed this http://www.intense-racing.com/walbroinstall.shtml and it worked perfectly. Prying the nippled out of the old pump sucks but I wouldnt have known to do that if it werent for that write up.

I have had 0 issues so far, even before I replaced my fuel filter. I didnt chop it in half to see what was inside but I wish I wouldve..

I took everything out in preparation for when the rest of the parts come on Monday. Problem is I don't have that center line like everyone else does. What do?



EDIT:

What does this little black wire go to? The instructions acknowledge it and say not to cut it off, but don't say what to attach it to (if anything).

I didnt have center line either. No idea about it.

Not sure about black line on pump either. maybe a remote switch or something?

I take it yours didn't have that line on the pump?

After a bit of searching I found somebody else who contacted AEM and they said to just let it dangle... Weird.

yes, mine had that line. Just tucked it away in a safe lil spot.

Got mine done today. Install went pretty straightforward, no major issues. My lock ring took a bit of persuasion to come off, but it only took around 15 minutes. Car starts and runs smooth, going to double check my fuel trims and adjust accordingly.

are you full of corn juice? did you change your cylinder gain table?

Not yet, waiting on injectors to do the swap.

So my car doesn't like to idle unless it's been running for awhile. I bumped up the timing and idle RPM which made no difference at all. On a fresh start it will die down to about 500 RPM for a second or two and then stall altogether. After it's been running/driven for a little while it will idle just fine, no problems. If I just give it a little gas and hold it the idle will raise and hold steady, and normal/hard driving is just fine. Fuel trims aren't perfect but it has idled better with worse. Voltage is about 13.5 during normal driving and idling which seems low to me, drops into the 11s/12s when the idle drops to 500 and it dies. Ideas? I'm thinking of trying the voltage booster mod...

Edit: Pulled out my IAC and found this:





Slapped in a new one and it's all better now.

went to the JY and they have a 97 aurora, they say that the fp only works for an NA riv can anyone shed light on this. would it work on a SC car. the pump just gave up the ghost fully last night.

Just get a new pump. It's a little more expensive but it's a job you only want to do once and have it done right.

Ya I am sending ractronix an email that hopefully I can get it done this weekend and I can go back to driving it and run it down the track in 2 weeks and see what the rockers and porting and such does. it feels stronger when it runs.

AEM E85 pump died for the second time yesterday.

Last time it did this I had to get a tow home. i pulled it and put a 12v power source on it, it whirled.., i put it back in the car, it worked fine like nothing ever happened to it.. ???


This time, same thing (I was home, thankfully). Key on, no pump prime sounds. I did the same thing as last time. test power to pump, CHECK. pulled pump and gave it power. NOTHING.

So I think it's finally dead.

Maybe put 12v directly to it with an old DC power supply or something? Mine's been working beautifully aside from not liking to pick up the last 1/8th or so of fuel. Did you try the old pump and see if it's working?

matt270avian wrote:

Maybe put 12v directly to it with an old DC power supply or something? Mine's been working beautifully aside from not liking to pick up the last 1/8th or so of fuel. Did you try the old pump and see if it's working?

I tested the module. Pulled the pump out and tested it and it worked fine.

Wired it back up and the Riv is running again. 2nd time this has happened no idea why. everything is perfect when i pull it and dissect it.

charlieRobinson wrote:

I tested the module. Pulled the pump out and tested it and it worked fine.

Wired it back up and the Riv is running again. 2nd time this has happened no idea why. everything is perfect when i pull it and dissect it.  

I can't remember if you did a rewire or not. If you didn't, maybe do one? If you did, maybe that's to blame?

Does anyone think replacing the entire pump and housing assembly is worthwhile? There's a big difference between the $37 fuel pump Rock Auto sells and the $195 AC Delco pump and housing

Jack the R wrote:

Does anyone think replacing the entire pump and housing assembly is worthwhile?  There's a big difference between the $37 fuel pump Rock Auto sells and the $195 AC Delco pump and housing

Only things I can think of are (1) be sure to clean or replace the fuel level sender and bend the arm the right way - details in the service manual and (2) replacing the pump alone is not a bad idea, as likely as not you'll get a better pump.

That said, the Carter pump that the GM dealer installed in my Riv more than a decade ago is  still running fine.  I did have to promise the parts guy not to run with less than 1/4 tank ha ha.

If you believe what Tom Taylor says in his fuel pump writeup the cheapest pumps RockAuto sells should perform satisfactorily.  If that is the case it'd require a side by side bench teardown to figure out the difference.

It looks like Intense's Walbro with the venturi setup is the one to get for the L67 - Link

Turtleman switched to a racetronix, but I don't know which one.

edit - Turtleman's racetronix was a modified Walbro 255. I can't tell if this is still available or not.

An exchange I've been having with Turtleman, very enlightening -

Quote :

Turtleman - Up until the FGT transformation i was using the racetronix as sold by prj. Twas a walbro 255 modified with the venturi feed port. Served me very well. I don't know what current availability is on them.


Jack the R - What are you running now?

Turtleman - Now I'm using the Deatschwerks 400. You can get them with the venturi feed too.
It's a larger body so very tight fit in the bucket - I had to remove the rubber isolator.
It sucks nearly twice the current as my walbro did so need to make sure the wiring can handle that. Mine legit takes like 30 amps under full boost

Jack the R - I've ordered Intense's Walbro with the hotwire fuel harness they sell. I think it's supposed to be the Casper Electronics fuel harness. Is that what you're using? I found a Bonneville thread that said the Casper harness was the best one.

Turtleman - Uh well I think the riv is a totally different animal in terms of fuel pump wiring than a w-body.
We have that PWM module in the trunk that runs the pump. The w-body has like a resistor circuit to step down power (that tends to fail).

I haven't seen one of these casper harnesses up close but I'm figuring the part of the harness you can probably use is the part that plugs into the actual in-tank assembly and then I'd splice the other end of those wires to that module we have. (likely somewhere near the connectors underneath the car close to the rear driver side seat where the harnesses pass through)

You'll see that the wires coming out of the PWM module are heavy gauge good wires. Where it goes wrong is the ground that feeds that module and mainly where those wires transition to the outside of the car (at least on the 95-97) it goes through a connector and then it's shit wire to the pump. You'd be basically wanting to eliminate that portion of the wiring. 98-99 Wiring is a lot more concise.

Jack the R - I read about the Casper harness in a Bonneville thread. As far as I know it runs an extra wire up to the alternator to pick up extra juice for the pump. I'm going to hope they make a generic harness that will work across H, W, and G platforms and not specific harnesses for H and W. We'll see when it gets here.


Turtleman - If the wiring harness runs a new wire all the way to the alternator then it effectively eliminates the PWM speed controller in the trunk since it works on the positive side. I wouldn't wanna do that in a street driven car since it would then run the pump at full speed at the time. It would shorten the life of the pump and maybe heat the fuel up a little. Not the end of the world but there's no reason at all to get rid of it. It's very reliable unlike the w-body garbage.
If you want the benefit of that wire upgrade and keep the speed controller, I'd run the new wire from the alternator or a main power artery (i'd just go to the battery since it's close) to the relay for the fuel pump instead of to the pump (like the new harness presumably comes), and then basically replace the two fuel pump wires going from the speed controller in the trunk to the pump, and finally, run a new dedicated ground supply for the speed controller. That would take care of all wiring improvement matters.

I wish I could find some new terminals for the speed controller so I could insert brand new terminals on my own wire run but I don't know where to get any. So I just solder or crimp to new wire. Soldering is difficult because of the large 12ish gauge wire coming out of the speed controller. You need a lot of heat to get good wicking. I just used like a barrel crimp.

My next question is, will the Walbro work with the existing wiring harness? I want to upgrade the wiring but I may want to drive the car while I'm figuring out what I need to do.

My God, that lock ring! How does GM get away with doing this crap? You gotta push it down and turn it at the same time, like an aspirin bottle. The special wrench is $300! But you can get it on eBay for half that used. I'm seeing some "universal" ones on Amazon for $25, maybe one of those will work. I'm not having a lot of luck banging mine out with a brass drift. Not too pleased here.

I've fallen back on the "pry up the tabs" technique, but I can't get to the tab under the fuel lines. Did anyone get that one?

One thing that has helped was grinding a notch into my brass drift so it doesn't pop off the lock ring so easily.

Every time I've done mine, I used a flat screwdriver or flat punch and hit the ring around from like the side with a hammer. Works fine for me

I finally got mine, I just had to upgrade to a bigger hammer.

Here's what I ended up using -



Brass drift with notch ground into the end.



Heavy hammer.

I had four of the five locking tabs bent up a little too. I don't know if that's necessary or not with the big hammer. It was still pretty tough to get out of the indent with the big hammer.