S4s Fuel Pump

[fflyingdog]

Hi All

My S4s came to a spluttering halt last Thursday,my first thought was that i had fuel starvation......... or to put it another way i had stupidly ran out of petrol ,i had my 2 year old daughter with me at the time ,so called my better half (thank **** for mobile phones) to bring me out a gallon of fuel in the trusty Mondeo.Anyway emptied said fuel into Lotus to no avail not even a hint of starting.Missus was a little pissy by this time so she took daughter and herself home and left me to my fate waiting for the AA man to arrive (40 mins).I checked all the usual ,inertia switch, fuses, relay,and any hint of fuel in the gallery etc but i couldn't hear the pump buzzing(but to be honest i never can hear it running).AA took car to Geff at Esprit Eng who subsequently removed pump and found that the "fly" lead that connects the pump to the outside connection had melted,and was basically shorting out (earth wire was melted to the inner core)plastic plug a dripping mess of melted plastic.Whats really frightening was that all the above had failed to blow the pump fuse,and yep the fuse was of the correct value,so god knows how long i had been driving around with basically a V2 rocket about to go off under my ass,now i dont know about you guys but i hardly ever drive around with a full fuel tank/s so all this melting/arching process was going on in the most explosive of areas you could possibly have, not wet fuel(bad enough) but right at the top of the tank with lots of lovely explosive gas.I cant think of any reason why the fly lead plug would arch ,the plug is a "snap" fit and cant come loose and cause arching,any ideas anyone? I will when i pick up car take the old pump assembly home and try and work out what caused this potential fire starter from happening.

New pump has been fitted and car starts and runs as adbertised.Havnt put my Missus in the picture as i am sure she would ban daughter from ever going out with me again,which would be a shame as she loves it.

Nick S4s

[Artie]

Yikes! I just installed a sport 300 pump, luckily no such melting had occurred to my old pump, but geez, that's a scary thing! As I was reading I was wondering if you'd let the better half know....As I would probably inadvertantly(read sarcastically) forget to mention the cause of the problem... Only thing I could think of is if the pump got jammed up with crud(read Rust) then the gerator(the little fan inside that pushes the fuel into the piping) stopped and subsequently overloaded the wires/connections and they melted. Ask Geff if the pump was clogged up with crud, this should tell you what caused the failure.

Artie

[fflyingdog]

Yikes! I just installed a sport 300 pump, luckily no such melting had occurred to my old pump, but geez, that's a scary thing! As I was reading I was wondering if you'd let the better half know....As I would probably inadvertantly(read sarcastically) forget to mention the cause of the problem... Only thing I could think of is if the pump got jammed up with crud(read Rust) then the gerator(the little fan inside that pushes the fuel into the piping) stopped and subsequently overloaded the wires/connections and they melted. Ask Geff if the pump was clogged up with crud, this should tell you what caused the failure.

Artie

Hi Artie

No the tank was clean as a whistle no water no crud no rust and the pump wasnt jammed,but like i say i will strip it all down and have a proper look when i get home (sometime next week).I told my Missus it was a loose connection,only a little fib

Nick S4s

[Drfatz]

Ooohh Geez. I recently installed a Walbro pump in mine and while doing it I thought, "Hey what would happen if this shorted out?" Hahaha I guess now we know! At least your okay and there wasn't a large explosion it makes me feel a little bit better about driving around with two bombs directly behind me

-Graham

[fflyingdog]

Hi All

Have enclosed a cfew pictures of the fuel pump electrical connections as you can clearly see the fly lead (from pump to housing) has melted and was flashing against the outer housing,i contacted Chris Brown at Lotus who has asked me to forward the pics to him,they have never heard of this happening before,the pump has done less than a 1000 miles,worrying thing is the shorting failed to blow the fuse,so this means there must have been a few sparks floating around ............inside the fuel tank (behind your very expensive head),so i wonder if any one else has had this problem and been driving around with a potential Saturn 5 ? Pretty crap design if you ask me

Cheers

Nick S4s (Saturn 5 ish)

[fflyingdog]

Update:

I sent the pump back to Lotus and they kindly sent me a new pump assembly (with out prejudice) thanks Mr Massey as a gesture of goodwill.............worked for me ! Yippe result.

Very Chuffed

Nick S4s