The 3000 Forum

I need the forums expertise on a recent problem. I attended a car show on Saturday 35 miles from my house. My car was running great and had been for a long time. After showing the car with the engine compartment open in the sun for 5 hours when we were leaving the show the car was hard to start but eventually we were able to leave the show grounds and got three blocks away when the car died. Turning the ignition key on the fuel pump was not "clicking" and the car would not start. The fuel pump was `replaced 14 months ago with a SU electronic one supplied from AH Spares. Waiting for the flat bed tow truck to bring the car home I tried to turn the car over but no response from the pump. This AM I went in the garage turned the ignition key on the fuel pump started to click until the fuel had filled the bowls and started right up and ran for over 15 minutes. What the hell is going on and can anybody point me to the problem since I am lost.

Vapour lock .

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That’s not an oil leak , it’s my patent pending rust proofing system .

So the vapor lock would prevent the pump even running?

It can. If the system is under pressure the pump won’t run. Had that happen to me in my E-Type. In that case the vent in the cap clogged and the pump stopped when it couldn’t overcome the vacuum. Was rewarded with a loud bang when I removed the filler cap.

Hi John,

Sometimes the points can stick but pounding on the rear bulkhead from the drivers seat might get it clicking again.

I never had vapor lock in 52 years ???

Bouna fortuna,
Peter C.

My fuel pump is electronic and dosen't have points. I did bang on the bulkhead and it clicked a few times and then nothing until I started the car up the next day.

I recently had three on-the-road breakdowns on my '60 BN7. Each time the car had started and run without issue until it quit on the road. The car had a glass filter just before the carburetor. After one return home under tow, I soon restarted the car and let it idle, watching the filter glass. It was initially full, but slowly the gas was pulled down to the bottom of the filter. I then wrongly concluded the filter was at fault, this despite the filter being clear glass and upon reconsideration clearly not dirty. So, I installed a new NAPA gas filter and soon experienced the third and final failure. I next replaced the fuel pump, a generic tubular affair, with an exact copy bought on eBay from a California dealer, $42 complete with shipping, clamps, a mount and filter. Ordered on Thursday afternoon and it arrived, to my amazement, on Saturday afternoon. Since the pump's replacement I have driven the car perhaps 100 miles. One other item. A member of our Healey club urged me not to install the recommended filter between the fuel tank and the pump. This is counter to the instructions. His reasoning is that if the filter blocks, the pump may burn out without the cooling fuel running through it. I took that advice. A final detail, the current pump is really quite noisy and runs very vigorously for quite a while, yeah, a minute or two, before I start up. The dead pump, in the car before my 11 years of ownership, was hardly audible even if you were listening.

The fuel filters were not fouled and all the gas lines are routed as original. The car runs at 180-190 F even in the warm months so that should not have caused the pump to stop. The one thing I could point to is I usually turn the key on and let the fuel pump run until the pump fills the bowls and stops clicking. When I left the show I turned the key on and started the car up before letting the pump stop clicking. Could this have caused the build up of pressure to stop it from running? Any thoughts?

A long time back when I had my 67 BJ8 with electronic SU pump we went to a car show , it was a very hot day and the car was running 195ish by the time we got to the show but running fine . Parked the car at the show hood closed , did the show chatted cars for 4hrs or so ,etc etc . Won best Healey in show .
Started the car to drive home , it started fine but less than a mile down the road it started coughing spluttering backfiring and eventually quit . I coasted off the road into a farmers market area and started looking for issues . Pump was not ticking .
After checking various things I pulled the main fuel line off the carburetor and turned on the ignition with the fuel line pointing over the fender away from the engine . It took several seconds of the pump ticking before I got a steady stream of fuel , lots of spits etc like when you have air coming out of your faucets at home after plumbing repairs .
Once I had a good fuel stream I reconnected everything back up . She fired up immediately and the drive home was fine , never had that issue again .
All I can think of was the contained heat of running and the car sitting in the heat vapour locked my fuel line .
I did get into the habit of opening the hood after long runs on hot days to let engine heat escape if we were at a show or when we got home .

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That’s not an oil leak , it’s my patent pending rust proofing system .