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Fuel pump not running 2k SVT

BrApple

No Life But CEG
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Dec 23, 2001
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Gales Ferry, CT
So I went to take the SVT out yesterday and it didn't start. As I started to fear I didn't hear the fuel pump prime the fuel system at key on.

​Back story, had the same thing happen last fall. No start, didn't hear the fuel pump. So I plugged a spare pump and it ran when the key was turned on. So I knew it was the pump. So around July 4th I finally got to changing the pump out. I used a new Ford updated fuel pump. Got the new pump in and the car ran fine. Well mostly. I did get some hesitation however I put the 1/2 tank of year old gas back in and immediately mixed it with fresh gas. I also ran that tank out and refilled. Seemed ok after that, have 3/4 of a tank at the moment. Ran the car a number of times over 1.5 months before taking a vacation over a week ago.

So the car was parked at least 2 weeks without running. So to troubleshoot I grabbed that same spare pump and plugged it in and it spun up with key on. For the fun of it I grabbed the pump that I took out and plugged it in also, it also spun up with key on. It has been sitting in the basement for 2 months now, wouldn't run when it was in the car.

I put some HEET into the tank this morning but it didn't seem to make a difference. I checked and the fuse is fine and there is 12 volts at the fuel pump plug. The internal ground seems to be fine also.

So what could be the issue? Pump was fine for 1.5 months and then was parked for ~2 weeks. Now it doesn't run. At a complete loss at the moment.

The question is what would cause a fuel pump to not run while in the tank that was previously running fine?
 
Ethanol if they use it there. Death to pumps and the death rate increases the more you let car sit. BTW, if they DO use it there then HEET is a waste of time, you already have HEET in the ethanol, the major ingredient.

If the old fuel acidified the ethanol portion (water + ethanol = acid) then the fuel conducts power to short the pump. The ethanol also eats the insulation off the pump windings, pump quits. Then pump dries out and if not gummed up at impeller then seems to run again, no shorting with the fuel dried up. The ethanol can also eat the magnet glue then the magnets come loose, they can seize up pump then come loose to make erratic working. Seen that more than once too.

Ethanol is pretty much transparent if the vehicle gets used every day to keep the fuel fresh. Let it sit though and the issues begin to multiply so fast you can't believe it. It drives occasional use motorcycle drivers batsh-t crazy with issues since those carbs vent so much to atmosphere. BTDT too.

I warrantied hundreds of pumps due to ethanol damage when I was in parts, if the fuel has phase separated then it can ruin a new pump in a matter of days. I personally never keep the same gas after a repair like that but most do as they cannot part with the money. By that I mean I DO use the fuel, except in the mower which eats just about anything regardless of quality. Nowadays I use ethanol free fuel in the cars that sit.
 
I wish ethanol free fuel was an option around here. After I filled the car this last time I also added sta-bil to the gas.

​So still think its the pump even though I ran the tank out and refilled it? No other causes could lead to this?

Are the stock pumps overly susceptible? I have a warlbro pump in the other car and it sits just as much if not longer than the SVT.
 
Check the collar ring that holds the pump in the car.. When my was giving me issues, it turned out to be that collar wasn't making a good enough connection to the tank for grounding reasons.. I removed the collar, cleaned it, reinstalled and everything has worked fine ever since.
 
Inspect the pins and sockets in the fuel pump connectors (both the wire harness free-hanging connector and the bulkhead connector in the pump plate) very carefully, these are "adequately" sized to carry the current of the stock fuel pump, and over time, as the connector metal carries current and heat cycles, the connections become loose and unreliable. Installing high output fuel pumps that increase the current carried by the connector accelerates the failure, tho it doesn't sound like you've done this.
 
Are you getting a good voltage to the pump?

Getting 12 volts at the pump. I tried checking the resistance across the pump but not sure I got a good measurement.

Interestingly enough I checked the other car (being a 99) and was only seeing 6 volts at the fuel pump. That was interesting.
 
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Check the collar ring that holds the pump in the car.. When my was giving me issues, it turned out to be that collar wasn't making a good enough connection to the tank for grounding reasons.. I removed the collar, cleaned it, reinstalled and everything has worked fine ever since.

Non-issue here. The retaining ring was brand new with the fuel pump kit. Also the pump is grounded via the wiring harness internally. The tank is plastic, the ground attached to the retaining ring is for the fuel filter.
 
Inspect the pins and sockets in the fuel pump connectors (both the wire harness free-hanging connector and the bulkhead connector in the pump plate) very carefully, these are "adequately" sized to carry the current of the stock fuel pump, and over time, as the connector metal carries current and heat cycles, the connections become loose and unreliable. Installing high output fuel pumps that increase the current carried by the connector accelerates the failure, tho it doesn't sound like you've done this.

Pump is brand new and the harness appeared fine to me, but I did not inspect it closely.

I have not upgraded the fuel pump in this car. Took the factory pump out and installed the updated design fuel pump.
 
Is there a place to get just the pump itself? I don't see needing a complete new assembly. Would the FSVT pump be a direct swap? I have one from a factory two piece pump, however that has been sitting around for some time also.
 
Hey Brian did you get a key on FP reading ? I helped my friend with his fuel pump a few years ago. He has weak FP key on. We dropped the tank swap in a new pump and fired up. Good key on FP and WOT. The next day dead, we couldn't hear the pump but did give a very weak KO reading through.No lie he went through 3 pumps ( even changed brands and both well known ) we got really good and changing pumps. the word on the forums was alot of bad pumps. The quality is very poor even from brands that have a good rep. He finally got a good pump and everything has been fine. I too was once worried about Ethanol but like you I store my Contour and Mustang over the winter. I use Star tron in the tank and run them before putting away. I also use Chevron Techron twice over the season. The Contours pump ( knocks on wood ) is the original 17 yo pump and no issues and the Mustangs pump is going on 10 years. I do use VP gas for the small engine stuff through but carbs seem to suffer more than injected motors.
 
I used to sell fuel pumps among about a million other parts, people even back then made all kinds of claims about 'bad pumps', and I warrantied hundreds of them. Pretty much in 90% of the cases you could easily tell what the buyer did that scrapped them and it had little to do with quality of the part. Most has to do with using only one gallon of gas after the install or running pump dry even a little bit, you CANNOT do that. The pumps are fuel cooled and lubed, running them dry will ruin them in as little as 30 seconds. I ALWAYS start car up with at least 3 gallons fuel in the tank. No problems ever. Even using really cheap pumps at around $30-$40 and they last for years. As well, commonly the user picks the wrong bottom rubber to block the bleed vent on a 'pump alone' install and then pump never primes and then burns up in 60. Sometimes the rubbers supplied are not the correct ones, I saw plenty of pumps either missing them or mixed up when people brought them back for refunds, they often stole them and then said there never were any in box. Sometimes the Chinese box packer simply throws in the wrong bag of rubbers (don't laugh there).

Any time people went through 3 pumps I could always find out what their issue was, it happened from time to time. User mistakes there, and do you think they look close at what they are doing? Nope, not even. Of course I found a bad pump here and there but not nearly a norm. Rare. You would be amazed at how much of the national market Walbro covers in pumps, it's a stranglehold. The OEM pumps are usually Walbro too. The other maker is Airtex/Carter.

G. Morrell has another out, you MUST guarantee the pin condition by pulling the connectors out to rebend them for better contact, once you yank them a time or two they WILL be loose. By that I mean the female. They can be coaxed out of the plastic housing if you are careful to be free to get to them.

Somewhere in there the system switched to no regulator and then it uses a driver module, the module may not want the full 12 volts at key on, only once car is running. Can't say but possible, the driver speeds up and slows down the pump to not need regulator any longer.

I have swapped pump 'alone' before but you may need to do more than what you think, the pump outlets and inlets and length/diameter of them vary all over the map. May work, may not. Some slip right in. Others will appear to until you look CLOSER, then the ultrasmall details kill you.

I've sat a car for 1 1/2 years before with ethanol fuel and no problems and then I've done it 3 months and had trouble, a lot depends on the quality of your fuel and there are problems there. You simply have no idea how long the fuel has been vented to air before you get it. And your evap system airtightness figures in there too. Why no oil company pipes ethanol any longer, only trucked in and mixed there locally and also how they can tilt the local % to not be at the federal standard to boost profits. There being no required % check of fuel by law. You can get up to 20%+ here even though it's only supposed to be 10. One reason why peoples' mileage checks now show so many variances and they then blame the new cars with problems. Here in Texas I use fuel as cleaning solvent, it picks up water to phase separate (turns cloudy looking) in maybe 5-10 minutes on a humid day. That should tell you something. Storage inside slows that down but does NOT get rid of it entirely unless the storage is temperature controlled. Sta-bil or other can help but don't overdo it, they present their own issues with too much of it. They kill the aromatic VOC ability in fuel and then it does not light off nearly so easy.

I have personally seen fully phase separated fuel destroy metal parts in less than 24 hours, don't ask, it was a bad day. The stuff is really strange, one time it hurts nothing and the next time you got junk after exposure to it. While not related, if you use any paint remover that is environmentally friendly and claims to mix with water, then likely ethanol is used there to do that too, I got burned real bad once long ago letting some parts sit in that type of paint remover OVERNIGHT and it ruined everything that touched the bottom of the container. That sounds exactly like ethanol. The same property has actually made parts come much cleaner using fuel, the ethanol component lets the fuel release completely at a water rinse to not have any oil residue gasoline film like normally happens. But you MUST quickly airdry the parts like with high pressure air nozzle or they will rust almost instantly.

One person's viewpoint only, you may encounter other.................
 
I have not checked the fuel pressure with the KO. I did check the fuel rail and there was no pressure.

​Not sure that I screwed up the pump installation either. We had the tank and an made sure it was clean before installing the new pump. I then put the 5 gal of gas back into the tank before trying to start the car. It ran fine so I went and filled the tank with fresh gas.

So doing some checking. The pump that came out had a ohm reading of ~10-12. The FSVT pump I have in a stock housing was ~1.1-1.3. The new pump was also about the same. I checked my OEM pump from the other car and it was much higher, near ten also.

Checked the voltage, pump is seeing 12 volt.

Plugging in another pump and it will run then stop. I think this might be the way it works, not sure.
 
The pumps where junk and we used more than enough gas. The last pump he used dropped in just like the others and is still working fine to this day. I have had my share of other junk parts in my mustang and my previous truck , it does happen. Brian I hope you get it straightened out soon.
 
All I can say is that I sold hundreds of pumps if not more and pretty much never saw any pump issues in ANY brand that could not be attributed to mostly owner issues when I looked at them close for warranty. Past that they simply didn't fail much at all. The owners of course all sounded like here claiming 'bad pump' and 'using more than enough gas'. Odd though after I mention that they never came back with another one failed and highly suspect. It lead to vendor issues when the vendors got back 'bad pumps' that upon their own in-house testing showed the same thing, the reject pumps started up and ran fine with pressure unless buyer had torn them up. Why I started looking into the issue.

Read what I posted about the bottom rubbers, often they look like the right one until you look CLOSE, then you realize they will not vent to prime. I've reworked some (ground with dremel and a rock or punch hole with hole cutter) to make sure they do with no issues, some of the rubbers supplied will NOT work in ANY case, you have to look for that rather than just blindly saying it will work at a quick glance. The problem being there are 500 different rubbers at the OEM level but the pump makers will only have maybe 50 types on hand. It's a part inventory costing thing.

Once you go to the entire module thing if changing pump 'only' then you have to watch the module as well, some pre-setup the pressure by having a bypass marble or two in the module casting or plastic hose and trash stuck at one of those can make for no/low pressure.

If running pump using KOEO then pump runs about 2 seconds then stops until engine is sensed as running. If using a simple jumper bypass pump will run all the time. When you first prime one you can easily tell the difference in wet and dry there, the motor changes note as soon as it hits fuel. If it doesn't you stop RIGHT THEN if no change in 10 seconds, that being 4-5 times of KOEO.

I would suspect any pump reading around zero, there is winding length there and likely should read higher, like the 10 or so. Close to zero says winding short. With ethanol though, running a pump then letting it dry overnight may put enough scale at the plug-in point on pump to then read close to infinity, I've pulled the connector off before to plug back on and it drops like a rock. You really have to get the work done and the pump back under fuel as quick and seamless as you can and tank sealed up too. I always seal up the tank opening if any fuel left in it and it sits, using heavy duty aluminum foil hand sealed to the opening.

The last pump I bought for '98 Contour had all the rubbers wrong and I had to make one up as well as shim the pump downward to lower the float to correct OEM height. Pump locates so crappy to stay in place that I also installed a hose clamp to lock it exactly where I wanted. I also modded the bypass re-entry to carry the fuel down right on top of the filter element to more reliably ensure the pump had fuel even at very low fuel levels. That on the one with no module. Runs fine and using a $30 pump.
 
Adding on to BrApple's post to try to get more views...

Todras and I got the "World's Fastest Contour" (RWalton's former car) out a couple weeks ago.

After bringing it home from storage and pumping out the old fuel by jumping the relay location, we attempted to start it up with fresh racing fuel. What's better than the smell of 110 leaded?!

Everything seemed to be in working order but...the fuel pump won't kick on when attempting to start the car. The starter is fine and I installed a new battery. When we jump the relay location the pump is working fine. The relay is also good so what would be the next step? Power to the relay location? If so, what's the best way to check that? Any other thoughts?

Thanks all! -CJ
 
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