Problems with wires when changing fuel pump!

[dinkus 10]

Right, so I just took out the old fuel pump from my VR and have a nice new one to go in, complete with the white cap, wires and pipes to it from my previous (94) VR so it was all assembled, ready to go in.

 

However, just as I'm lowering it into the tank I notice that the blue wire has come off the solder point on the underside of the white cap bit.

 

So I think ok, no problem, I'll just solder it back on - but it would appear to be some kind of high temp solder that I can't melt with my wee electroncs soldering iron.

 

Next plan was to just swap the sendors over between the pumps, but they're a different design, so won't fit.

 

Anybody got any (helpful ;) ) suggestions?

[Supercharged 2]

Sender unit is about £40 as I bought one for Eric the other week... I'd expect them to be the same tho but they must have changed them...

[dinkus 10]

Piccies added

[Walesy 0]

that's not a bit of oil on your hands there is it Dink?...are you feeling ok??

[dinkus 10]

No no, it's definitely petrol.

 

and it stinks.

[Walesy 0]

shirly you'l need to get a bigger/hotter soldering iron? :D

[CoxyLaad 0]

use a mig welder :D

[Jim 2]

No no, it's definitely petrol.

 

and it stinks.

 

 

Cigarette mate? :)

[Walesy 0]

LOL..

 

Or I could lend you my blowtorch Dink?.

 

 

(( sorry ...sometimes I really can't help it ))

[Supercharged 2]

Dink, works a bit slow today so let me know if you want me to drive to Cambridge to undo any bolts for you ... :lol:

[dinkus 10]

Well screw you lot - I just cleaned up the joint and soldered the wire onto it instead.

 

It's only for the sender, so shouldn't matter too much if it does fall off again.

[Walesy 0]

LOL

 

 

see....that's why you're a mod dinky.... the ability to think on the spot :wink:

[dinkus 10]

Ah FFS, I get back out there, lower the pump into the tank and then the black wire falls off!

[White2505 0]

Answers on a postcard to the 'Which swearword is coming next?' competition

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Holy billabongs, that is one ancient fuel pump Dinks..... Looks like and old druid design. Mine looks nothing like that Robot wars reject :-)

[dr_mat 0]

Do let us know if you get the random-full-tank problem on the fuel gauge after you've swapped the pump and sender...!

And even better, if you fix the random-full-tank-problem!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Eh? I've swapped pumps 3 times and never had that issue!

[dinkus 10]

Well you'll be happy to know that after fixing both wires and having to take a guess at which way round they went on the sendor, I actually got the pump in, had the right amount of petrol showing in the tank and the bugger started too.

 

For those of you not paying attention, the swearing competition answer was bugger.

 

 

However, this was just stage one of the operation. The next stage was to put the Robot Wars reject into my mk3 as the pump in that appears to have given up the ghost. Now, this is a completely different design again (the sender is on a plastic tube thing that comes down from the top cap and isn't attached directly to the pump at all). The pump itself does actually look like the new VDO one that I put in (the top cap for the tank also has VDO written on it).

 

I'm assuming as it's the same 4-pin connector on top of the cap, that whatever pump I put in there will work, it's just a case of having different variants on how it works.

 

Problem is, the bastid's jammed solid in there - I can't budge it at all :(

 

Gonna have to wait for backup methinks.

 

Mat - I'd guess your random tank-full thing is probably because the float keeps catching on a wire or pipe in the fuel tank. If you take the screw down hatch off the tank - have you got re-usable clamps on the fuel pipes? If you do, then you might as well whip the top off and have a look to see what's going on in there.

[Yandards 0]

Kev I expect he bought the fuel pump from this dodgy mexican character hence the crap soldering!

[dr_mat 0]

Mat - I'd guess your random tank-full thing is probably because the float keeps catching on a wire or pipe in the fuel tank. If you take the screw down hatch off the tank - have you got re-usable clamps on the fuel pipes? If you do, then you might as well whip the top off and have a look to see what's going on in there.

 

Could have sworn Kev said he'd had the same problem with one pump at some point.

Never mind.

 

Yes, could be latching, but the weird thing is it'll sometimes latch to "full" from quite a low fuel level, like less than half tank. It seems more likely to be electrical to me. It started happening after I got the garage to "recalibrate" the scale, cos they'd fitted a new pump and it was consistently reading low cos they'd not put the "Corrado-shaped" sender unit onto the new pump.

 

If I can be arsed I'll open it up and have a look, but it's more annoying that anything. When the level gets down to the .25 tank area, it stays accurate enough for me to not worry about accidentally running out of petrol!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I've not had that happen, but I've had the running out too early syndrome though!

 

There's nothing for the float to catch on as such, so unless they left the wires hanging about in such a manner as the float could catch on them, I dunno!

 

I wouldn't touch the calibration adjuster personally, by default it's set so that the float carbon tracks start at about 5mm higher than the pickup, and the pickup sits about 2 or 3mm off the tank floor.

 

It's really a piece of piddly little cake getting in there and having a feck about. Just arm yourself with some new jubilees (x 4) and the proper fuel ones aswell, before you start.

[Tempest 0]

A bit late perhaps, but I can confirm that the 2 sender units bewteen the old and new pump, as shown in Dinkus' original piccies on page 1, are totally different. The new pump has a sender unit that is indeed adjustable to calibrate it.

 

But what was more annoying, where the wires from the lid to the old sender unit ran into the plastic casing of the unit onto some typical VW-only connectors, the new sender unit simply had spade-type connectors. So I had to cut :shock: the original wiring from the lid, crimp and solder onto these suitabel spade connectors (which I thankfully still had flying about), and reconnect the lot.

 

I would have thought that for 40 quid, some more user-friendly backward compatibility would have been provided by VW, like plug&play, but no.

 

Glad you sorted it, Dinkus.

 

Tempest

[dinkus 10]

Yeah, luckily I had the whole assembly in a pre-bodged state, so didn't need to faff about with that.

 

And my mate managed to remove the old fuel pump from my Goof just now, so I'm gonna have a cuppa and go put the new pump in! :)