my 87 coupe in the shop FUEL PUMP

[Mad-Mic]

went out ad warrenty covering it but still out 200 bucks would of been over 500 total with towing. whatta month

 

[Ken]

You don't do your own repairs on something like that Mic? :confused

_ken

 

[Mad-Mic]

i would but i don't have the place to do it. need to build a garage on my house

 

[rrubel]

My driveway is available on weekends if you need it occasionally - only catch is that you have to wash my Vette .

Sorry to hear about the fuel pump. That can be a messy job, and something I have to look forward to eventually.

[RICHR]

 

[boblx2a]

Fuel Pump

Everyone who owns a Vette for any length of time may be unfortunate enough to have to replace one.

My last one, on my '86, came as somewhat of a surprise. I drove it to Portland to work and parked in the parking garage. When I came out after work to start it nothing happened. When it wouldn't start I listened for the familiar whine. Nothing! So I called AAA who informed me that "we" would have to push my car out of the parking garage because the Vette had to be put on a flat bed truck. Once we decipered who "we" was we got along fine! He brought a buddy and then they rounded up some voluteers to push my Vette out of the garage, at least in reach of the cable from the flat bed. What a job! I sure felt sorry for those guys. That was tough push.

Then my big mistake, I bought an after market fuel pump. You can probably guess the rest of this story. It was very, very ugly. My recommendation is to buy the pump from Chevrolet. When I did that it worked. It actually is a very easy job that can easily be done in a driveway. I have done some other cars that we had to lower the gas tank, etc. But the Vette is about a 30 minute job, unless you get a bad after market pump then the allotted time goes expodential!

Good luck with it..................

 

[Mad-Mic]

thanks bob,
already done at the dealership. the car is under warrenty so they are eating this one! :L but what got me is the car only has 40k miles on her. that was my prob i didn't know where the fuel pump was on it. thought it was under the tank like most GM cars are so i wasn't gonna mess with it plus i don't really got the tools or place to do it unless i take it to my uncles shop but then it's gotta be out of there cause they are always working on the TAD.

Rich,
sounds cool bro! hey i got a set of small block valve cover gaskets if you want them. let me know and they are yours!

 

[boblx2a]

FUEL PUMP

Well you can't beat that price. It kind of concerns me that you only have 40K on it. Mine has only 42K on it and I was planning on changing it about 50K. I didn't want to get a surprise like that again.
You know the old mechanical fuel pumps would give some warning when they were getting ready to go. These things are running great one second and the next second they are dead! I don't need that to happen a second time.
Did your car spend a lot of time sitting in a garage? Mine hardly gets to catch it's breath since I bought it. Don't know if that does any good though, I drove the '86 like I stole it and it went out on me too.

You don't need much of a space or tools to do that, if you have to do it next time. You could do it in a parking lot. Just need a few hand tools if I remember right. I did the last one in about a half hour. Of course you get better at it the second time.

Good luck with it..............

 

[rrubel]

Mad-Mic, thanks for the offer but I have a set of metal-core re-usable gaskets from Summit. If I do the work wrong, I'll need to be able to take the covers off and on again without new gaskets .

Anyone looked at the higher-rate GM pumps (TPIS sells some, Summit sells some)?

[RICHR]

 

[Mad-Mic]

i wish this was on my list of to do things but it wasn't. i made sure JBA chevrolet put a GM vette pump back in it.

Rich,
No prob just offering let me know time and place to help you with it! i gotta get your # again.

Bob,
i'm not sure if i got any warning or not. the car has been acting sluggish on low rpm on warmups but i thought it was just its nature till the car got up past 130 water temp or so. once it acted like it was running on 5 cylinders. it ran and bloated a few times out the exhaust then cleared up. was like it was starving for fuel never happened again. so i hope this fixed alot of my problems with it. (don't have none really) i've been quite pleased with this car. i've only driven it 8k miles since i've bought it in jan and had to replace the altinator and now the fuel pump both under warrenty.

 

[-=Jeff=-]

When I replaced my fuel pump I bought it from these guys..
http://www.autoperformanceengineering.com/html/fuelpump.html

The GM pumps are made by Walbro I believe. I got the 255LPH standard pressure pump for $93 plus shipping. It is an upgrade over the stock one.

It states that it is a Universal GM pump and it was a direct plug in on the assembly, I did not have to splice any wires..

The nice thing about our C4's is to do the pump you do not have to drop the tank.. took me about 1-1.5 hours to install.

 

[boblx2a]

Ffuel Pump

Mic,
Glad you got it fixed already. Yeah the alternator seems to be a high level failure unit on these C4's. At least on the earlier C4's. Don't know if they improved it on the later ones. I have put three alternators on my 86 in as many years. Lucky for me they were all under warranty except the first one. So I am not sure if this is really a "C4" problem or a vendor problem.
So far I have not had to put one on the '85 but then I have had it for only a year. I bought it with 37K on it and now it has 46K on it. I told someone (I think it was you) that the '85 had 42K on it. I looked last night and it was 46K. I guess time (and miles) go fast when you are having fun!

The first pump I changed on the '86 was not a standard pump. Someone had modified the wiring to make it work. The last one that I got from Chevrolet had to be retrofitted to work. According to the Helm's manual the last one was the correct wiring type. That is where I got the idea that it is better to replace the pump about every 50K if you don't want an ugly surprise.

Good luck with it................

 

[Mad-Mic]

well yesterday i had to take my 87 vette back to the dealer after the fuel pump install. i only put 200 miles on the car from friday to wednesday. if i nailed it around a turn it would've kicked the rear end out and get funky but i noticed when i made a U-turn on night over the weekend it acted like it sloshed fuel around and caught an air pocket for a second and picked back up sorta like bogging down with a full tank of fuel! so after i replicated the problem a few times (4 times) i decided it wasn't catching air in the line and took it back to the dealer wed morning before work and they finally fixed it today (the chevy dealer here does pretty good work and they are always backlogged a day or 2) the outcome was the pickup line with the screen was kinked when they put the new pump back in. i KNEW it! played it off like i was dumb about cars to the shop manager when i took him out on a test run and made a Uie with over a 1/4 tank of gas about half way thru the Uie i stomped it, it should of got funky and started to then BOGGGGG.......... and the shop manager said felt like air in the line i said even with a full tank? i showed him i had over a 1/4 tank in it and he took care of it.

i thought they were gonna try and charge me for it but didn't