Greetings!
At the time of this writing there are only 12 days left until Christmas! My wife Tammy is busy knitting warm stocking caps for the grown kids scattered around the country. She's got a few dozen bars of homemade soap also, in boxes & bags ready to be sent by Santa Express. She's too busy for me to pester her. So, I went to my secret lab to work on the hot rods.
I jacked up Gary's '51 Chevy and braced it with jack stands so I could crawl underneath and remove the gas tank. Again. It's a brand new unit, made especially for the '51 Chevy and I had already installed it with a sending unit engineered for the stock fuel gauge. Since Gary ordered the AutoMeter gauges for his shiny, yellow dashboard there was a chance that the fuel level sending unit may not be compatible. The AutoMeter gauge instructions stated that the new fuel gauge requires a specific resistance to be accurate. I took out the sending unit and discovered that the resistance value was way off and I needed to use the one included with the gauge. It wasn't as easy as just switching units, I had drilled a hole in the top cover of the first sending unit and epoxied in a length of aluminum fuel line that terminated in an aircraft fitting. This allowed the fuel system to circulate from the tank to the regulator on the throttle body and back again to the tank. This is how electronic fuel injection (EFI) works; the regulator just builds up to a specific psi and bypasses the rest back to the tank. Before I could switch sending units I had to modify the new one in the same way.
Since this is a retrofit EFI installation, there is a potential drawback: The fuel pump isn't located in the gas tank so when the fuel tank is less than 1/2 full the fuel may slosh to one side on a freeway entrance, or to the rear (away from the pickup tube) under hard acceleration. When this happens the car may stall, or hesitate. To overcome this, I've installed a polished aluminum fuel cell under the car beneath the passenger's feet that contains about a quart or more of fuel at all times. Now, it won't matter how frenzied of a driver Gary or Jason become, there will always be enough fuel at the fuel pump. In this fuel circuit a filtered, low pressure pump brings fuel into the cell and keeps it full, then a filtered, high pressure pump pushes the fuel into the throttle body regulator. For those of you who wonder about the colored fittings, they're referred to as AN fittings or aircraft fittings. They make for a re-usable, leak free connection for fluids (and they look pretty cool too).
In the picture above you can see the fuel cell with the red return line going into the top of the fuel cell and the blue line taking the fuel all the way back to the tank. The high pressure pump is the one being held in place with the plastic tie straps. You can also see my shoes and tool boxes in the background. I just thought I'd identify those things for my readers. Anyway, all of the components are up above the bottom of the frame rail and away from the exhaust route, drive shaft and other hazards.
At the time of this writing there are only 12 days left until Christmas! My wife Tammy is busy knitting warm stocking caps for the grown kids scattered around the country. She's got a few dozen bars of homemade soap also, in boxes & bags ready to be sent by Santa Express. She's too busy for me to pester her. So, I went to my secret lab to work on the hot rods.
I jacked up Gary's '51 Chevy and braced it with jack stands so I could crawl underneath and remove the gas tank. Again. It's a brand new unit, made especially for the '51 Chevy and I had already installed it with a sending unit engineered for the stock fuel gauge. Since Gary ordered the AutoMeter gauges for his shiny, yellow dashboard there was a chance that the fuel level sending unit may not be compatible. The AutoMeter gauge instructions stated that the new fuel gauge requires a specific resistance to be accurate. I took out the sending unit and discovered that the resistance value was way off and I needed to use the one included with the gauge. It wasn't as easy as just switching units, I had drilled a hole in the top cover of the first sending unit and epoxied in a length of aluminum fuel line that terminated in an aircraft fitting. This allowed the fuel system to circulate from the tank to the regulator on the throttle body and back again to the tank. This is how electronic fuel injection (EFI) works; the regulator just builds up to a specific psi and bypasses the rest back to the tank. Before I could switch sending units I had to modify the new one in the same way.
Breaking away from the distraction of my Marine son's return, and chased away by the wife's busy activities, I went to the paint shop and put the color on the Mazda. I had been waiting for a day or so for the new set of wheel maskers to arrive. The paint job turned out really good! I may have to do a bit of polishing to make it perfect, but it looks like a keeper. Now I can take it to my lab and put it back together. My life is so exciting!
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