phunk

Ya its been through a few changes. The "final" design work is all done, its just been pending production for a month or so now. Our CNCs have been tied up with the bread and butter work that pays the bills. Ive actually got a few quotes pending on having some of the machining out-sourced on a few of the components since we are low on available time for it. Ive been driving my turbo car a lot lately since the weather in Chicago is nice, and ive been able to get the car into fuel starvation with as much as 3/4 tank of fuel coming out of a hard right at full throttle with my new sticky tires. So I am pretty anxious for it myself as I fear for my motor when leaning out like that at 500+rwhp.

I spoke to the guy running the previous prototype on his road race car, he mentioned that they spent all day on the dyno with it and it held up.

Hopefully the new model is able to perform just as well. His car is all-motor. I hope that the new version not only works just as well, but I hope that it is able to work well enough for 500+rwhp cars without depleting the integrated surge can.

The model in that test car is an in-tank surge can setup with its own pump that mounts to the drivers side of the tank and has 5 lines going back and forth inside the tank to integrate it to the stock pump assembly. This installation was a huge concern and he confirmed it was a nightmare to get it all in there.

The new version is an entire complete fuel pump assembly replacement that mounts to the passenger side of the tank and eliminates the stock one completely. So its much more of a drop in after configuring it outside the tank.

The older one was much easier to construct because it didnt have so many integrated components.

The new one is far more extensive since it is replacing the stock one completely. It has an integrated Bosch fuel pressure regulator that is set to the same pressure as stock, and it has an ingrated replaceable fuel filter. It had to have those in order to be a drop in replacement for people who arent looking for mega fuel supply, but simply a solution to the starvation. I didnt want people to have to do a return system and external filter and regulator and what not just to solve it. In its simplest form, its a drop in replacement and PnP with the fuel lines and all, only the electrical connector has to be changed to our 6-pin connector to drop it in.

Fully assembled, the unit couldnt fit through the opening in the gas tank. So there is light assembly to do inside the tank, but I was able to keep it pretty simple.

But having to integrate siphons, level sensor mounting, wiring connectors, fuel filter element and housing, fuel pressure regulator, and the ability to add a second pump, ability to eliminate the fuel pressure regulator with a fitting to use for return fuel when adding a regulator to the engine bay, etc, and make it all so that it can get inside the gas tank opening without extreme work or modifying any part of the car other than the fuel pump wiring connector, was a serious chore. Also, the old version used 4" 6061 tubing for the canister portion, this one is a fully billet canister so that we can make use of the entire 4.25" opening for greater internal volume and space for the additional fuel pump to have a larger diameter (like the walbro 400 with its 2.0" base portion).

The very first original prototype that we never even tested was actually a ton of billet parts that built up the stock assembly into something along the lines of what we are doing now... but it wasnt very clean, had to much awkward machining, and not enough displacement, nor the ability to add another pump.

So basically we started out trying to keep it as simple as possible, found it to be more complicated, so we kept it simple and then didnt like the installation or complexity of the back and forth system with fuel transferring all around the gas tank through multi hoses, basically I didnt trust it not to have some sort of balancing issue in 100% of circumstances... and now we are basically to the most complicated possible method of having to completely re-engineer a fuel pump assembly from scratch for this car, only have to make it out-perform the OEM engineers in every perspective, while still fitting through the same opening.

This thing has become quite a pain in the *** for us... but I didnt do all this work for nothing. Unfortunately it just came to "completion" in the middle of the busy season where its very difficult to process it through the CNCs.

It is now constructed of 8 seperate, complex billet components that need fixturing for machining from 2-4 different setups in the CNC.

I do not post about it anymore because I basically got to the point where until I am holding something in my hand ready to ship it out, there wasnt much point. At various stages in the past, we were as close as I claimed to being able to put it together and retail it, but they were previous theories.

Every time you work on a project, you could have done better. There is always a line you have to draw that will be where you decide it will have to good enough and its time to move on to the next. With our previous models, I hadn't come to that line. I didnt want a product I was going to have to revisit and rebuild in the future, I just want it right the first time because I dont want to come back to it. While I can sit here and still imagine a few ways I could make it a little bit "nicer" even than it is now, I cannot think of any further way to improve its logic unless I see it have a performance issue that needs adjustment.

So now I am in the same boat as you guys, just waiting. You will see this exist, and you will see it soon... and I wont quote an ETA.. but its damn close now.

__________________