And replaced the fuel pump and filter at 239K miles.
The fuel pump was marked Lucas and all the lines were original, as was the strainer.
The filter was changed last in 2008.
And, they were all perfectly fine.
I see a lot of photos of horridly corroded surge tanks and strainers that are falling apart and lines that are rotting away, from cars with 1/4 the miles this one has. Lending further weight to my philosophy of
“drive the d%&m car”.
The surge tank while itself really, really clean inside did have a quarter cup of rust chips in the bottom that are no doubt from the primary tank. As expected for the age.
The strainer was perfectly intact and after cleaning tolerated moderate poking at the screen without tearing, so I reused it instead of the much smaller aftermarket replacement I had on hand.
I pumped out about 14 gallons prior to disassembly using the stock pump and it was still working well enough, though I’d heard it be overly loud a couple times this summer and with the miles I figured I’d change it before it died. The Bosch replacement ( the stock one was a Lucas marked pump with Bosch germany in small print as well) had screw terminals like every other European car instead of spade connectors (lol), easy enough to swap. Mind the polarity.
I had one scare. I pulled the surge tank and cleaned it in the parts washer, filling and dumping it to get all the rust bits out many times, finishing off with some carb and brake cleaner in and out so it’d not smell.
When first refilling the tank, I saw the surge tank was weeping around the spot-welded on flange that the lock ring goes into. Gaahh!!
But after wiping it off a few times and over the course of 15 minutes or so, it magically stopped weeping. My working theory is it was not fuel, but solvent that had seeped in externally being somehow forced out, or just gravity draining. I let it sit filled for a good long time and no more weep. Very relieved.
I did not try to use the drain plug, it was easy enough to just pull the tank once it was empty. It did look like there was a magnet on the drain plug. Almost as if they knew there would be ferrous metal debris in there…
Only other note is even after running the pump with the filter outlet plumbed into a can to the point where it was dribbling and sputtering, the first time I removed the hose off the pickup that feeds the pump a surprising amount of fuel came out. I hooked it back up and engaged the pump again for another ten minutes and it was dry the next time. Go figure.
Not an overly bad job all in all. Bit sore from sitting in the trunk, but hey…