Test First!

[eveofrevolution]

I recently purchased a tii with a non-functional gas guage; the word on the street seemed to be: "eh, those things go bad, get a new one. It's prolly jus da sender, mate!"

Well...

I decided that a new fuel pump would be nice too, since I have plans to megasquirt down the road, and the original was surely tired by now. I settled on the e30 in tank pump, since I have a '71, and since I would be needing a sender, it was a good fit and a good price. I orded the whole shebang from BavAuto for around $450, on a monday. I accidentally selected regular ground, instead of rush shipping, which meant that my parts would arrive 10 days later. As it happened, I ran out of gas 100ft from work 4 days later, on the next Friday morning ( I needed a gas guage!). I pushed the car to the work parking lot, and pulled out the sender to visually check the level-it was indeed empty. After work, I got some gas, primed the pump, and drove on home. I spent Friday night adjusting valves, setting timing, resetting injection linkage, etc. I got it all done, but when I tried to start after adjusting the dwell, no dice. I finally realized that my fuel pump was silent. Hey, at least it was in the driveway!

So you're thinking this dead pump would be fine, since I've already got one in the mail. Well, I had to get to work on monday somehow, and since my girlfiend is borrowing my WRX, and my road bike has a cracked steerer tube, it was the tii or nothing. Of course, this meant begging my roomate to spend his saturday driving me down to Mesa Performance for parts. You can imagine my releif that Mesa had ONE e28 external pump in stock. (it did take them about 20 nervous minutes to find it once I got there though) The new pump went in without a hitch, thanks to the FAQ. I took the advice of others and sandblasted and painted the tii pump housing before it went back in. I also used a pepboys inline prefilter since my sender screen was missing.

Tonight, I decided to fix the guage, so I pulled the old sender, and got the new pump/sender installed. Yeah, having two pumps is just extra weight, but I figured having a backup pump ready to go, but only needing a few hoses to be swapped would be cool. I hooked up the sender, and it read full, but my tank was empty (just like the old sender...). My ground wires was connected to a brown-black wire coming out of the harness. Hmmm...brown is ground, not brown with single black stripe. So I wired up a new ground, and my new sender read empty: working as expected.

Since I have a euro model, my sender should have 3 connections, ground, level, and empty light. My sender only has two. So there I am, admiring my handiwork, thinking I'm so smart for figuring this out, when I decide to whip out my multimeter and test the old sender for kicks, and it goes from 74 ohms empty to .3 full. DOH! Now it is painfully clear to me that the empty light lead had been connected to ground all along, causing the guage to always read full.

Which means:

Had I checked the sender FIRST, and discovered it was functional but connected incorrectly, I would have had an accurate fuel level reading, would not have run out of gas (which probably killed the pump-remember the missing pickup screen?), and would not have decided to order the $450 e30 pump just to get the guage sender!

I did leave the original tii pump full of fuel and capped off the ends, so it can be rebuilt in the future. Anybody need one? I have plenty of pumps now.

Lesson? Hooray for spare parts! And test first...yada yada.

[c.d.iesel]

hooray indeed - great success story

don't leave gas in the stored pump,

instead , fill with MARVEL MYSTERY OIL

for a better storage liquid, and a 2-ounce

dose in the gas tank will make the car smile.

[Scott Sislane]

does this mean your next repair is your odometer? (I recently posted helpful pics in the project section, if you do) I get about 250 miles on a tank, try not to go past 240 miles, to be safe.

Scott

[AustrianVespaGuy]

A tii, a WRX, and a road bike, I think I like this revolution guy, we seem to have some common interests! My fleet is perhaps a little closer along the baseline, and includes the 2002, an Impreza TS, and my Surly commuter bike. Anyway, good job on the diagnostics; hopefully you can also return the now unneeded expensive pump/sender? Happy motoring/riding!

-Carl