Club 80-90 Forums

Once more my little wagon let me down After the new engine, oil pressure switches and water issues getting as sorted as they are ever likely to be, on my way to the work shop this morning the van just stalled and that was it, called the AA and they were fantastic, I had an idea of what the problem was as it had done it before, so told the AA guy and he was straight onto it, a problem with fuel getting through to the carb, he said it was probably the old style fuel pump, and that a lot of dubs he's come across had changed the old mechanical pumps for electric ones, so firstly can anyone tell me if this is so or not, I've never heard of it before, and if it is, what sort of pump and is it a straight forward DIY job

To be honest, the mechanical fuel pump will give many trouble-free years of service but most of these vehicles are fairly old now (relatively) and unfortunately the fuel pump is rarely on the list of parts for renewal despite sometimes several engine changes. Generally on v-dubs the pump or pushrod wears and it will ultimately fail. A new pump and/or pushrod should give many more trouble-free miles - no reason why not. Never fitted electric myself (just seems more likely to break down than a machanical one) but some on here have done just that.

Here is a link that may help.

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... &p=7331702" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mike

Grun wrote:Here is a link that may help.

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... &p=7331702" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mike

Thanks for the wise words all I'll have to think about this one, electric or mechanical, when I see any vehicle wiring diagrams they mean as much to me as doing accounts whereas with the mechanical, as my engine is quite new the push rods should be fine, therefore it should be a simple swap, decisions decisions

I think you misunderstand me. When you unbolt the fuel pump it has its own pushrod. People buy new engines as basic blocks or even have them fitted, using their old ancileries such as alternator, carb, distributor, fuel pump etc. Unfortunately the ancillieries themselves can often be worn but most don't worry until they fail. To be fair, not many mechanical fuel pumps achieve a full 20 odd years of use. The diaphram/valves inside perish in time and sometimes the pushrod wears down, making it too short to operate the pump. Personally I'd just fit a new mech fuel pump rather than mess with an electric one. There are advantages in running an electric one, particularly if you ever run out of fuel and need to suck it through from the tank, but nowt wrong with mech ones. VW liked them anyway.

CovKid wrote:I think you misunderstand me. When you unbolt the fuel pump it has its own pushrod. People buy new engines as basic blocks or even have them fitted, using their old ancileries such as alternator, carb, distributor, fuel pump etc. Unfortunately the ancillieries themselves can often be worn but most don't worry until they fail. To be fair, not many mechanical fuel pumps achieve a full 20 odd years of use. The diaphram/valves inside perish in time and sometimes the pushrod wears down, making it too short to operate the pump. Personally I'd just fit a new mech fuel pump rather than mess with an electric one. There are advantages in running an electric one, particularly if you ever run out of fuel and need to suck it through from the tank, but nowt wrong with mech ones. VW liked them anyway.

how do you pull the fuel through? i ran out, but was on a hill so managed to bump it through!

An old trick which has stuck with me from by Beetle days is to remove air filter and put a splash of petrol down the carb bore - then get in and start it. The thinking here is that the engine will fire up immediately (albeit briefly) but turning at a greater rate of knots than it would on battery/starter power alone, thereby sucking the fuel through much quicker and reducing the chance of flattening your battery trying to start it. Quite often that splash will be enough but if not, repeat until it starts and keeps running.

That's what the AA guy did with some easy start, as it subsiquently broke down again twice since then, I found that by removing the outlet pipe from the pump and giving the engine a short turn til some fuel came through I was able to start it, and then once warming up it seems ok, I've ordered a new pump so will hopefully be able to fit that tomorrow, hopefully then it'll be sorted, Question, is this sort of problem more likely when the engine is cold, and also will a pump which is faulty make the engine run unevenly ????

Word of warning my wife picked up the new pump for me and brought it over to my workshop, at first glance it looked the same but it's been modified,apparently to stop people putting the pipes on the wrong way round, the inlet now takes 7mm tubing instead of 5mm, not much difference I hear you say, but enough to stop the job of fitting it before I started, so if anyone else out there is planning on doing this remember to get an inline filter which takes both 5mm and 7mm tubing, and a short length of 7mm petrol hose

All sorted though?

Cheers mate, I hope so, it started easily with new pump, and not sure if it's my imagination but engine seems to run more evenly? Having said all that, when I came to remove the old one I found the nuts weren't even tight! I'll bring that up with the garage, and after all the hassle with the oil pressure switches, which seem to be ok now, I'm sure there is oil leaking from around the core plug?! I gave it a good wipe round when doing the pump so should be able to see soon I have to say that even though the old pump was hard to get at, well the back nut anyway, and also with the pipe on top of each other, they have managed to redesign the new one so that it's even worse This is why I don't usually work on engines, you guys must have the patience of a saint

hi guys.
had the same problem.aa said fuel pump knackered.
could not get hold of my own aa man(brother) 20 yrs in trade.
got new fuel pump/ would not work as pipes were in wrong place.

aha. here comes brother.
checks fuel pump/all ok.

digs deeper finds tiny pin hole in pipe(sucking air)cut off and renewed.
hey presto/starts first time

now he is my chieft25 mech.
verat25

ps fuel pump from gsf parts(they gave a refund)

I think I'm going to be looking for a new mechanic to deal with mine, I've been very patient with the garage I've used. When the engine blew up in jan this year I took it to them cos they were the only vw specialists I knew of, they have been fair with me, I said I was skint so they let me pay off the 2k+ over time, thing is they had my T25 for 5 months, I found myself looking for bits to hurry the job up I got it back at the end of may, it's been back to them so many times, mainly oil leaks, water leaks etc, yesterday when I took off the old pump, the nuts holding it on were on done up finger tight and now today when it seems to be running well, I notice water peeing out of the back again Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I had to put in about 7 liters to get me home

where is the water pouring from?

I notice water peeing out of the back again

I can't tell but it is ending up in the channel under the pulleys, I think it's been doing it's all the time, I'm going to take another look later as I now think it must be something to do with the filler tank or hoses from it, the only other place it can be coming from that I can think of is where the two metal pipes are joined with a rubber one, behind the crank pulley. I'll let you know if I'm right, at least it'll save me taking it back to the garage

PS I will post some pictures of the engine in my other T25, I asked what it was from in a previous topic, I've too busy to think about it lately but now I've got bugger all on, so I'll be stripping that one down shortly