Posted on 11/30/2011 8:03:27 AM PST by varmintman
The topic here is this little guy:
Somewhere around the early 90s Honda and Toyota started making cars to last longer than their owners last. I have a 96 Honda Accord with around 210K miles on it, synthetic oil all the way, bulletproof 5-speed manual transmission and all the main parts of the car seem set to live for another 30 years, assuming I replace spark plugs, timing belts, radiators, windshield wipers and that sort of thing once in a while.
But I've seen cars killed by over-engineering things and that fuel relay is just that. When one of the things dies, the car cannot be started easily unless it's dead cold, so that running errands is basically off the agenda. I replaced the original one of those around June and that one died about two weeks ago and I had to replace the thing again yesterday i.e. either the one from June was defective or there's some electrical problem killing the things.
What I'm wondering is, does the car really need that thing?? I mean, cars in the 50s, 60s, and 70s never had those and didn't seem to need them. Has anybody ever just shorted the two real wires together on one of those things and basically just defeated its function altogether??
My 2003 Ford F-150 has a reset button for the fuel-pump shutoff. It’s fairly inaccessible (below the dash on the extreme right kick panel), so it’s possible to re-locate the cutoff switch where the driver could access it. Or, perhaps they have fuel flow monitoring; if the fuel system isn’t breached, there’s no need to turn off the pump.
Find a replacement relay from Omron or Idec and forget about it for a while.
You should see the spares I carry.
I'm glad you brought up the diode, it completely slipped my mind. If you've got those probes in the correct direction, the ohmmeter should have enough voltage to cross the PN junction and it'll show continuity across the diode even if the coils open.
If you don't have a meter handy, you can just rig up a set of jumpers from a piece of lamp cord to test the coil. If you can get the cover off, see if the contacts look burnt, and trace the coil wires to the contacts, and give it battery current on those contacts. The points should close. If not, the coil is shot.
If you can't get the cover off, see if there's any kind of diagram on the relay. If it's good you should get a positive "click" out of it when the coil is energized.
Fords. Some things never change. Had the same problem in my old Aerostar van.
Good information here from several posters, many thanks!
If indeed the relay failed again, you might try to determine what current the fuel pump is supposed to pull and what it is actually pulling.
You may be burning the contacts due to too high of a current.
I would be looking at replacing a pump with that kind of mileage just as preventative maintenance.
Good idea but unfortunately the thing cannot be taken apart to the point of seeing any contacts without destroying it.
It doesn’t look like it’s potted in goo. It looks like it has a circuit board that snaps into the plastic container. If you have to replace it, try and take it apart, what’s the harm?
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