Electric lift pump

donm

donm

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On a previous thread I was looking for advice on a fuel tank hatch, for which I have taken good advice. This is a new but related thread concerning adding an electric lift pump.

I have now cleaned the tank and cut the hole for the hatch. Everything clean in the tank and no delivery problems in the pick up pipe. So, I have replaced the filters and upgraded to Racor, renewed all delivery pipework and purged the tank. The last possibility (intermittent stopping) is fuel starvation because the lift pump may not be able to do the job. Max. lift required is in the order of 1.2 m and min. is around .6 m so both well in excess of the .25m recommended by Beta!

A small electric lift pump looks to be the solution. Has anyone else fitted one - there are plenty to choose from on fleabay?
 
A mechanical pump will easily do up to 1.2m so an electric one shouldn't be necessary. Have you tried operating it manually to see what head it will do? It may be that one of the non returns has some dirt in it.
 
Is it ok to run the original mechanical pump and an electric pump in series?
The age of my engine suggests a simple breakdown avoidance strategy and the cost of replacing the original pump is greater than an electric in line pump.
 
I think they would be better in parallel. Mechanical pumps have non returns and I don't think you could pump through it.
Slowtack said:
Is it ok to run the original mechanical pump and an electric pump in series?
The age of my engine suggests a simple breakdown avoidance strategy and the cost of replacing the original pump is greater than an electric in line pump.
Click to expand...
 
Been there, done that, replace the mechanical pump, which has obviously done sterling service for years. Electrical pumps are good but introduce a whole new arena of problems.
 
Can you put some sort of small reservoir, 'swirl pot', extra filter, etc etc after the lift pump, raised high enough to feed the injection pump?
First off, I think maybe put a pressure gauge on the fuel line into the injector pump while the engine is running.

Two possibilities are, there is not enough fuel pressure at the input to the injector pump or there is air in the fuel caused by leaks under the excess vacuum due to lift height.

A metre of fuel is not much vacuum though.
Less than o.1 bar.
Compare that with pressure drop due to a few metres of viscous losses through hoses, drop across filters etc.
Do you have a figure for what the lift pump output pressure should be?
 
We have a 4 year old Beta 35 with a similar lift height as you. Ran no problem but but took forever to bleed. Spoke to Beta and they recommended fitting a facet electric pump immediately after the tank and in line with the mechanical pump. This has worked perfectly.
 
Talmine said:
We have a 4 year old Beta 35 with a similar lift height as you. Ran no problem but but took forever to bleed. Spoke to Beta and they recommended fitting a facet electric pump immediately after the tank and in line with the mechanical pump. This has worked perfectly.
Click to expand...

Spoke to Beta yesterday and had the same advice so that's the way I am going
 
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