Even after 400 Bugeyes, sometimes last-minute failures happen and need to be addressed, even on 501! As we prepared the first production Bugeye, AN5L/ 501 for its appearance at this weekend’s Audrain Concours D’elegance in Newport, Rhode Island, we noticed a fuel smell upon startup. Upon inspection, we found a steady drip coming from the fuel pump. You can see in the photo below the peeling paint, a tell-tale sign that we had a fuel leak.
We just rebuilt this fuel pump a little over a year ago, so the reason for the leak is currently unclear, and we didn’t really have time to investigate, as 501 was due to be loaded on the trailer for Audrain at 9 AM this morning. Leaks like this are why we strongly recommend installing our solid-state electric fuel pump kits (available here or by clicking the photo below) on all of our Bugeyeguys builds. They are infinitely more reliable, never leak, and significantly reduce the likelihood of leaking fuel into the crankcase.
Of course, this is 501 we are talking about, meaning we cant cut into the fuel line and drill holes in the rear bulkhead to fit an electric pump; the standards wouldn’t allow for such modifications. So we turned to a replacement mechanical fuel pump, which we also offer in our catalog (click here or click the photo below to order). Should you also feel that you would rather install an original-type mechanical pump, this is an option for you, as well. For 501, it was the only option.
Now, for the purposes of this concours, the replacement off-the-shelf mechanical pump will do just fine despite it not being an exact match to the correct pump we had installed. However, had we been loading up for a National Austin-Healey club Concours event, we would have had to figure something else out. While the replacement pumps look very similar, they have two distinct differences from the originals: it isn’t painted green and it doesn’t come with a primer lever.
Original fuel pumps on Bugeye Sprites had a small lever on the side of them that was used to prime the fuel system in the event the car needed it. It’s a really cool feature of original pumps; unfortunately nobody reproduces the priming lever-equipped pumps, so when we did the concours build on 501, we had to rebuild an original one. Unfortunately, the rebuilt pump only lasted about a year; back to the drawing board!
