Fuel swirl pots: opinions on safety!?

[lee mills]

The way i understand it after speaking to Clive is that they sit on the bottom of your tank on each side then you have a pipe connecting the two and tee off to your pump. I think thats right but im sure Clive will correct me if im wrong
 
Lee

[karl_tate]

yeh thats the way dave has explained it, sounds really good.

the only query for me is how they can be mounted in the tank easy or i would have bought some of these when clive first advertised them

[lee mills]

will be fitting some of these at some stage. there on my to do list:rolleyes:

[Initial-D]

Ahh right I see so whether the fuel sloshes to one side or the other in theory they will always have a supply of fuel. I guess a small bracket would be best to hold them in place.

[lee mills]

forgot to ask about this bit maybe they are held in place by some sort of suction hopefully Dave or Clive will see this & let us know

[Smifta]

So you lose the sock with this pickup?
How does it combat acceleration-starvation when all the fuel is at the back of the tank (not left/right)?

[AtomicRex]

I can see this is a great option due to the price, but what it doesn\'t do is stop slosh...you still have a very flat tank with petrol moving front to rear and left to right.  Also there isn\'t the capacity to hold a good level of fuel similar to a swirl pot.
 
Our system is 3L, and fills on acceleration and cornering left and right.  It also is sufficiently baffled to prevent any slosh.  It comes with an electronic fuel sender which will give a more accurate reading too.
 
For on the road....I can imagine Clive\'s unit is a good compromise.  But if you want to have the security of continuous flow....Id say our system will be able to offer that.

[davehg]

slosh is not an issue if you are picking up fuel from directly off the bottom, this system works on pressure differential to contol the valves, as soon as the pressure changes (drops on the oump side of the filter) the valve closes and the second valve continues to pick up fuel. Both pick ups are positioned in different positions in the fuel resevoir inside the tank.

At the end of the day if you run any tank low on fuel including swirl pots your asking for trouble. This is in my opinion is not only the cheapest but also by far the safest (no fuel in car) way of solving the pick up problem with the 044 pumps without having to go to all the expense of new tanks, fuel lines, swirl pots etc. Personally i dont like the idea of fuel being pumped at high pressure into the car, one leak with one spark and its good bye car.

Ive tested clives device for many months now with no issues what so ever no matter how it is driven or how much fuel is in the tank.

im runing a T51, 1600 secondarys with 850 primarys so not exactly a small system.

[karl_tate]

im just going to buy these, try and figure a setup out, and see what happens :yes

[lee mills]

im just going to buy these, try and figure a setup out, and see what happens :yes

please take pics and a full write up
 
Thanks
Lee

[karl_tate]

will all be in my rebuild thread

[Initial-D]

Ahh nice one, look forward to seeing the pics.
Spoke to Clive and the valves sit at the bottom of the tank - they don\'t attach to it.
An excellent idea!

[lee mills]

Dave just trying to sort out my fueling issues and i am thinking of using these any chance of a chat on the blower asap to discuss a few things
Thanks
Lee

[karl_tate]

i still havent managed to get these fitted yet, have been thinking how im going to mount them but until i get all the fuel out and have a look in the tank i wont know.

[stacy]

We do an in-tank solution.
 
The problem you get with fuel swirl pots is it can only be 1.5 litres. Now with 2 1680cc injectors....how long do you think it is going to be before you drain a 1.5 litre swirl pot on full chat?? Proof of which is that TonyC has said he is still getting surge issues, and is now looking to run one of our tanks.

Hi,

Was amazed when I read this, then on giving it further thought I just can\'t work out how this is physically possible.. :confused:

Previously I ran a swirl pot (buried in the rear wheel well, and yes lines came through the car but they were metal braided). It was 1l, and given the setup it\'s just not physically possible to drain it if correctly installed?

The return line from the carb/injector rail will go back to the swirl pot not the tank (or it should do) and the take off is at the bottom. It is filled from the top by a lift pump from the main tank capable of outdragging the engine requirements (red top or something), plus an overflow from the very top that vents back to the main tank. So the draw is only the fuel that\'s actually used.

So for you to drain a 1.5l swirl pot you need to have ingested, and not had returned, 1.5l in the time it takes to execute the /corner/ and enable the pump to refill the pot.

So either the lift pump isn\'t filling the swirl pot quickly enough (needs upgrading) or the return line has been fed back to the main tank instead of the pot.  So I\'m lost as to why your swirl pot needs to be 3l.

With this set up correctly installed I could run the race car dry of fuel, and this worked with other race cars too, both injection and carb on road tyres, race tyres and full slicks. All of them had the lift pump and pot hiding in the plated off wheel well.

Nowadays I have an ATL fuel cell, with an in-tank high pressure pump direct to the main fuel line. It sits inside a baffled collector pot and is pretty good, but frankly less efficient when you are scraping the bottom of the tank than the swirl pot twin pump system. It will surge when we get down to vapours. It was installed for extra capacity only.

I\'m presumably missing something so wait to be educated!

Cheers

Stacy