SeanMatteson
Registered User
Hi all!
I'm currently working with Steve Richards to put his beautiful '89 SC back together. The motor and tranny have been out of the car for the past two years (almost), and finally we're working on getting a powerplant back into the freshly refinished body.
Last night we found that we had a fuel leak at the fuel pressure regulator. Steve is running some big injectors, and the tune calls for higher than stock fuel pressure, so he was planning to run an Aeromotive AFPR. At first we thought we had made some sort of mistake in mounting the new unit, like a missing o-ring, or gasket, or that the bolts weren't tightened down all the way. I never thought it possible, but we managed to re&re the regulator without removing anything we hadn't already bolted on (including the lower IC tube, the inlet elbow, or the supercharger), and this is an '89 with the big, clunky Teves Mark II brake hydraulic unit. If you don't want to take my word for it, you can ask Ed Nicholson, the president of the SCCoO, because he helped re&re the unit a second time today when we found it was still leaking.
Anyway, the story is that Steve bought this unit well over a year ago, but it never got installed before last night. It was brand new. Unfortunately, the warranty is only good for 90 days from the date of purchase, so we knew he was SOL. We decided it couldn't hurt to disassemble the unit to try to determine what was wrong with it.
The first thing we noticed was that mating surface on the bottom half of the unit was marked with scratches. It looked like the part had been dropped and kicked around the shop floor before it was ever assembled at the factory! We just couldn't see how this would be condusive to getting a good seal in the unit. I'll forewarn you that my camera isn't very good for closeup shots, so the images are a little blurry. Here's a pic showing the issue:
Then, to make matters worse, we found that the diaphragm inside was not punched properly. The main mount for the actual valve was off-center, which results in there not being an equal amount of material around the circumference to create a good seal. Furthermore, the notches around the circumference for the four assembly bolts were not located properly. This resulted in the bolts actually cutting and deforming the diaphragm when the unit was originally assembled. Here's a pic showing the issues:
...And here's a shot of how this poorly shaped diaphragm actually fit in the body of the AFPR:
Also, when we first discovered that the unit was actually leaking from where the two halves of the body go together, we noticed there are a couple of extra holes drilled and tapped in the bottom half of the unit. These are countersunk like they should accept some screws to help hold the unit together, but are holes only in the bottom half, that actually end at the rubber-like material that is the diaphragm. In the following pic, then can be seen at approx. the 1 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions. Does anybody know what these are for? Should there be screws in these holes sealing up the bottom of the unit? Should they have some kind of 'fuel-friendly' thread sealant on them?
So...
As you can well imagine, we're not at all impressed with the lack of quality that the Aeromotive unit has displayed to us. I used to think that Aeromotive was one of the best names in the business, but now I'm hoping there's actually some manufacturer who can build a quality AFPR. That's the whole purpose of this post. Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem with an AFPR? Which brand(s) are to be avoided?
We need to have the ability to raise the pressure from stock ASAP, so any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Sean
P.S. If you're interested in more details about this project, you can check out another thread over under the SCCoO forum. Look here!
I'm currently working with Steve Richards to put his beautiful '89 SC back together. The motor and tranny have been out of the car for the past two years (almost), and finally we're working on getting a powerplant back into the freshly refinished body.
Last night we found that we had a fuel leak at the fuel pressure regulator. Steve is running some big injectors, and the tune calls for higher than stock fuel pressure, so he was planning to run an Aeromotive AFPR. At first we thought we had made some sort of mistake in mounting the new unit, like a missing o-ring, or gasket, or that the bolts weren't tightened down all the way. I never thought it possible, but we managed to re&re the regulator without removing anything we hadn't already bolted on (including the lower IC tube, the inlet elbow, or the supercharger), and this is an '89 with the big, clunky Teves Mark II brake hydraulic unit. If you don't want to take my word for it, you can ask Ed Nicholson, the president of the SCCoO, because he helped re&re the unit a second time today when we found it was still leaking.
Anyway, the story is that Steve bought this unit well over a year ago, but it never got installed before last night. It was brand new. Unfortunately, the warranty is only good for 90 days from the date of purchase, so we knew he was SOL. We decided it couldn't hurt to disassemble the unit to try to determine what was wrong with it.
The first thing we noticed was that mating surface on the bottom half of the unit was marked with scratches. It looked like the part had been dropped and kicked around the shop floor before it was ever assembled at the factory! We just couldn't see how this would be condusive to getting a good seal in the unit. I'll forewarn you that my camera isn't very good for closeup shots, so the images are a little blurry. Here's a pic showing the issue:
Then, to make matters worse, we found that the diaphragm inside was not punched properly. The main mount for the actual valve was off-center, which results in there not being an equal amount of material around the circumference to create a good seal. Furthermore, the notches around the circumference for the four assembly bolts were not located properly. This resulted in the bolts actually cutting and deforming the diaphragm when the unit was originally assembled. Here's a pic showing the issues:
...And here's a shot of how this poorly shaped diaphragm actually fit in the body of the AFPR:
Also, when we first discovered that the unit was actually leaking from where the two halves of the body go together, we noticed there are a couple of extra holes drilled and tapped in the bottom half of the unit. These are countersunk like they should accept some screws to help hold the unit together, but are holes only in the bottom half, that actually end at the rubber-like material that is the diaphragm. In the following pic, then can be seen at approx. the 1 o'clock and 7 o'clock positions. Does anybody know what these are for? Should there be screws in these holes sealing up the bottom of the unit? Should they have some kind of 'fuel-friendly' thread sealant on them?
So...
As you can well imagine, we're not at all impressed with the lack of quality that the Aeromotive unit has displayed to us. I used to think that Aeromotive was one of the best names in the business, but now I'm hoping there's actually some manufacturer who can build a quality AFPR. That's the whole purpose of this post. Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem with an AFPR? Which brand(s) are to be avoided?
We need to have the ability to raise the pressure from stock ASAP, so any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Sean
P.S. If you're interested in more details about this project, you can check out another thread over under the SCCoO forum. Look here!
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