So I got my rebuilt starter back the other day, put it in the Midget,
and had a great evening drive about town. Drove it to work the next
day, and all was well. But later in the day I went to take it out and
it ran very rough. Like it was starved for gas. Every time I'd stop it
would die unless I kept my foot on the gas. I pulled over and popped
the hood, and looked at the little clear fuel filter "thang" and it was
basically empty - so no gas getting to the engine! Oh one note.
Yesterday was HOT. 90's and such.
I managed to get it to stagger to a friend's house (fellow MG enthusiast
in town), and left it. Later, we ran the fuel pump, watched the filter
can fill up, so we started up the engine. All was fine, until after a
minute or so, it began to run rough, and we could see air bubbles coming
in to the fuel filter can. Not good!
Assuming something not right between the filter (up front) and the tank
(in back of course), we jacked up the back end, and checked around the
fuel pump. Right away, we noticed the body was wet up under - maybe an
8"x12" patch or so. We assumed fuel, and assumed it must have been sort
of spraying up there.
Also, we were comparing notes on how long we had to run our fuel pumps
before starting (when all was well). You know, turn the key a click and
listen to the "tickety tick" before starting. I told him I routinely
had to wait 20-25 seconds before I could get it to go, and his took
around 2. "Clearly", we thought collectively, "something is not right
here."
So! What does the collective mind think? I got some new fuel line (the
hose stuff) and am going to replace the short hoses that join tank to
pump and pump to metal fuel lines. But I'm wondering now about the pump
as well. Also, the heat was a factor I'm thinking. Hoses get soft in
the heat, and some pinhole leak gets bigger? Heat affects pump? That's
where the collective mind is called to comment :^)
Tim Holt
'74 Midget
http://denali.nacse.org/~holtt/misc/midget
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