legacycentral bbs

How do you know if your FPR is going bad?
Is there a way to test it?

From my experience, the car was hard to start, without putting my foot to the floor on the accelerator. I figured it out by pulling the vacuum line off of the FPR and fuel came out. This is bad, which indicated that the bladder inside was cracked/split allowing the vacuum to pull fuel into the intake manifold.

Yeah, if fuel comes out the vacuum line that's definitely a problem.

The usual test of an FPR is to measure fuel pressure. The usual tool for this purpose is a fuel injection pressure test kit, but I found a way to do this on the cheap using parts from my local auto parts store.

I bought this tire pressure gauge:
http://www.partsamerica.com/ProductDeta ... mber=20036

And found that the tire chuck could be unscrewed to reveal a male 1/8" NPT fitting. So then I got an 1/8" female NPT tee fitting, two 1/8"-NPT-to-5/16"-barb fittings, and a short length of 5/16" fuel injection hose.

I used some Teflon tape to assemble the fittings together, pulled the outlet hose off the fuel filter, and replumbed it with the gauge in between the filter and the engine.

If you do this, keep a fire extinguisher handy and of course remove the setup before actually driving the car anywhere.

What you want to see is around 26 psi of fuel pressure at idle. Then, you disconnect the vacuum hose from the FPR (idle quality will suffer but it should still idle) and hope to see about 36 psi of fuel pressure.

If those numbers are correct, and no fuel comes out the vacuum hose when you disconnect it, the FPR is working right with 99% certainty.

Ok. Sounds great. I'll do that tomorrow!

Cool.

I got more part number info, which might help if you're planning on going to your local Schuck's/Kragen/Advance/whatever:

Tee: http://www.partsamerica.com/ProductDeta ... er=3210121

Barbs: http://www.partsamerica.com/ProductDeta ... ber=323312

And don't forget a couple of fuel injection clamps.