Best Fuel Pickup Intank?

[260DET]

Having problems in extreme situations with fuel pickup for the fuel injection system. Use a Holley Red pickup pump to a surge pot to the Bosch fuel injection pump, which all works perfectly except after some high G cornering. Keep the main tank level a half or more and no problem, under that and the problem can arise.

 

Its all been dyno tuned, no problem at all at full power, only in the situation described above.

 

I notice that some use a small sump in the tank but I'm concerned about it getting hit, being so low. More baffles in the stock tank may work but would be difficult to get done. So what simple arrangement have others used to improve pickup?

 

If the topic has been well discussed before then kindly send me to it, a search did not come up with much of use

[Dan Juday]

Drop a note to Scott, a.k.a. strotter. He was telling me about a system by Holley (I think) that uses mulitple pick-up points in the tank. They have some space-age valve that closes automaticly when they are about to suck air. Scott was all jazzed about it because he has the same problem as you. Seems he was telling me that it didn't cost very much and required little or no modification to the tank.

[Drax240z]

I used a sump welded on to my tank that extends about 1" lower than the bottom of the tank and it works like a charm. I've never had fueling issues on the track or street, and I don't recall ever bottoming out on it, even on steep driveways and so on.

[260DET]

The Holley setup looks interesting but they don't explain how its installed, particularly how the pickup feet are fixed to the tank floor, or otherwise installed.

 

A sort of shallow sump system looks to be most suitable, using an external pickup pipe from it will enable the Holley red to get a much better fuel flow path, which they seem to need.

[strotter]

The feet aren't mounted to the floor of the tank - it isn't necessary. They're held there (gently) by the flex tubing used to hook them up. What you do is cut off the original pickup fairly close to the top of the tank, attach a short bit of fuel hose, insert a "Y" fitting, attach enough flex tubing to the Y's to reach the desired positions, then attach the pickups. The "Y" is aligned and so that flexible fuel hose both positions the pickups in the correct quadrant of the tank, and gently keeps the on the bottom. They work as advertised, took about an hour to install and debug. The biggest problems I had came from undoing my previous attempt (mimicking something I saw in the JTR fuel injection book). I was also pretty anal about making sure they sat flat and were pretty much in the back corners of the tank (mirrors, flashlights, squinting, cursing).

 

The pickups only really need to be gently coerced into position for three reasons: 1) the fuel being sucked through them keep them pretty firmly attached to the bottom of the tank in some general area; 2) if they move around a bit, let 'em: if they are exposed momentarily to air (such as at speed bumps or a big whoopty), they close; 3) if you have them held in the corner of a rectilinear solid (the tank) by an only somewhat flexible and only moderately compressible member (the hose), there isn't much anywhere they can go anyway.

[260DET]

Thanks Strotter, it sounds like to some degree that the G forces would allow the pickup feet to follow the fuel. Anyway, whatever, thanks very much for the info.

[Clifton]

Does your return line return back to the surge tank before returning back to the main tank?

[260DET]

It does, but I'd prefer to return warm fuel straight back to the tank if the pickup could cope.