The Silver Buick's well Silver Buick!

[dieselgeek]

Are you going to use Aeromotive's pump controller as well? Yannick installed one on a customer's car, the Fox Mustang with the sbc 434 with Hilborn efi. It slows the pump down at lower rpms to prevent the fuel from getting hot.

Or, consider staging a second inline pump like you are using now. have the megasquirt's spare output turn it on whenever you are above a certain throttle position or manifold pressure (load). That's what a lot of guys are doing. The benefit of two pumps is, if one breaks you can run the other to get you home.

[DanStokes]

Also - what size fuel line are you running? I'd think a 3/8 ought to be adequate but a 5/16 - probably not. At some point it takes a lot of pressure to force a baseball thru a garden hose (or something like that).

Dan

[TheSilverBuick]

Or, consider staging a second inline pump like you are using now. have the megasquirt's spare output turn it on whenever you are above a certain throttle position or manifold pressure (load). That's what a lot of guys are doing. The benefit of two pumps is, if one breaks you can run the other to get you home.

Funny you mention this, as I started thinking about it a day or so ago I still have the original junkyard pump I ran on the car a year before buying a new one 'just because' and have thought about plumbing it in. When running a second pump, do you have to plumb it in parallel with a check valve or simply inline?

Dan, the pump(s) is 5/16th diameter though the line to and from it is 3/8ths.

The Aeromotive pump can still be applied to the Turbo Firebird if not the Skylark.

[dieselgeek]

I think it's been done both ways, but the one way I saw it work well was with the pumps side-by-side, drawing from a single large feed, y'd to both pump inlets, then I believe there was a simple check valve on the output of each pump so that fuel under pressure would not flow backwards into either pump if not spinning.

The guy I know actually had FOUR stock sized pumps feeding a healthy turbo LS.

[TheSilverBuick]

I've already got the Aeromotive pump and was thinking of running it straight and seeing how the fuel temp problem might pan out on my surge tank set up since the fuel would recycle into a ~1 quart surge canister and minimal back to the tank in theory. Plus the surge canister/pipe has a ton of surface area that air is actively blowing around when going down the road to dissipate heat. Basically I expect fuel consumption to trump heat saturation, even at cruise. If my math is right, at 70+mph/18mpg I'm burning a 1 quart of fuel every 4-5 minutes. Doesn't Bill run his full time with no controller? Or am I forgetting how his fuel system is set up?

Economically, I can pick up three of my stock 5/16th Ford pumps for the cost of one Aeromotive pump, which I have to admit I like those economics, redundancy and ease of getting replacements (even Ely's NAPA has them on the shelf).

[dieselgeek]

I'd be concerned about fuel heating with such a small surge tank. How many times will it pass through a regulator and pump with such a huge overkill pump (A1000?) before being consumed? It'll be super simple to run a temp sensor (just use a Gm CLT sensor) to find out for sure and would answer questions for sure.

[TheSilverBuick]

How ever many times it can in 5 minutes? I think the big issue with most fuel heating set ups is the hot fuel is dropped at the top of the tank and the cool fuel is consumed at the bottom so the heat is continually added with little cooling, basically the bottom of the tank? This surge canister is a cylinder that is mounted just off the firewall so air flows completely around it, and the 'heated fuel' is consumed within a 4-5 minute window and replaced with cool gas tank fuel. In theory.

I'd have to run a temp sensor tee'd in to the fuel line going to the A1000 as I can't mount it directly into the surge canister.

[milner351]

I had an issue running an electric and mechanical together on an old project.

Talk to both pump manufacturers before running two pumps in "series".

I like the two pump idea - no need to run the "race" pump when you're not at WOT and high rpms.... no reason to bypass all that fuel all the time.

Can megasquirt handle straight J or K type thermocouples? Instead of having to drill / tap for a sensor - you can epoxy or superglue tcouples to the fuel rails and fuel canister and even the tank and lines if you want a full picture of what the fuel temps are doing.

[dieselgeek]

Can megasquirt handle straight J or K type thermocouples? Instead of having to drill / tap for a sensor - you can epoxy or superglue tcouples to the fuel rails and fuel canister and even the tank and lines if you want a full picture of what the fuel temps are doing.

Thermocouples require a TCA (thermocouple amplifier), a relatively cheap integrated circuit, but a simpler thermistor is easier to use with the megasquirt's spare inputs. Lots of volkswagen guys use them for monitoring cylinder head temp. Simplest is still the Gm coolant temp sensor though, i'd prefer to get a measurement of the fluid itself versus the canister.

My thinking is that the fuel in the canister will heat up tremendously. I think the fuel's heat has more to do with the quantity of fuel you are trying to heat. I.e. a quart of fuel will reach a much higher temp in the same amount of time that a complete tankful of fuel would heat up. Kinda like the design of those "instant water heaters"

I could be wrong but what an interesting data point Randal could dig up... hint hint

[DanStokes]

Good question, John. Does MegaSquirt have the look-up tables or algorythms (however the heck you spell that) to support T-couples. I need temp sensors on the new project and it might be cheaper to pick up a used MS (don't need the control part) than a new readout from Omega or ThermoElectron.

Oops - Scott gave the answer before I asked the question. Ain't BS grand!

Dan

[dieselgeek]

Good question, John. Does MegaSquirt have the look-up tables or algorythms (however the heck you spell that) to support T-couples. I need temp sensors on the new project and it might be cheaper to pick up a used MS (don't need the control part) than a new readout from Omega or ThermoElectron.

Dan

It'll be cheaper to pick up a simple thermocouple amplifier.

[milner351]

Dan check out ebay - lots of used industrial measurement stuff ends up there, it's not hard to set up many thermocouples into an onboard data logging system. OEMS have been doing that with a tremendous number of thermocouples for years.

[DanStokes]

We did them that way too. Rustrac Ranger, that sort of thing. That's probably antique technology now! I 'spose they could be found on Epay, etc. This here modern world!

Dan

[TheSilverBuick]

I'll review the sensor location install stuff when I revamp the fuel line plumbing while the engine is out in January.

I'm thinking of coughing up the $30-$40 for a practice smog test on the Skylark just to see what the tail pipe emissions are. Just a curiosity really. I'd expect the NOx to be through the roof, CO a 50/50 chance of passing and HC's should be good. Never know though.

[DanStokes]

Depends on the cam's overlap. Overlap = free EGR! Works great. So it might do better than you think.

Dan