We've had a fuel issue with our 1.9 petrol 1984 camper since we bought it nearly 3 years ago. I won't bore you with all the times our Clara has died due to fuel shortage. It's a lot!!! To fix the issue I've replaced fuel filters, fuel lines, fuel pump and stuck a new battery in just to boost the pump a little. All of this did help a lot, but the problem hasn't completely gone away. Up in sunny Rochdale this year the problem came back as the van died a few minutes after driving off. Then today we finally limped home from sunny France with the same issue. Once the van died after pulling away from a service station, then later died in the middle of a very long and very stationery traffic jam. The symptoms are always the same; dry fuel lines into and out of the fuel pump. Looking back at all of the many times this has happened the weather has always been really hot. In most cases I've been able to restart by injecting a little fuel into the carburetor. Not always ideal when you've got a weeks worth of luggage packed on top of your engine
Or when your van's died in stupid heat on a very busy jammed Belgium motorway. Last night, after a torrid and incident packed drive north our van died again as we pulled into our overnight hotel stop. It was late and I simply didn't have the energy to attempt another repair. This morning was wet and cold and our Clara leapt into life without any tweaking from me at all. Our drive back home in the colder UK was absolutely fine... So my question is this... Do the original manual fuel pumps really suffer to work in extreme heat? Will switching to an electric pump cure this?
I have also suspected the fuel tank. It's envariably full of 31 years worth of gunk, but why is my problem only when the weather is stupidly hot? Surely I dirty fuel tank can cripple the fuel lines in any weather?
Thanks
Steve
