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MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Solid State Fuel Pump

Just fitted electronic ignition to the 1275 and after a bit of messing setting the timing the engine purred along, that is until the fuel pump packed in. I noticed a slight spluttering and then nothing. There were no ticks from the pump and the glass filter was empty. After a tow home the blasted thing started immediately with a full filter bowl. I know cleaning the points or even a sharp tap on the pump would probably solve the problem - for now - but I don't want to be crawling under the car, at the side of the road with a hammer in my hand so am thinking of fitting a Facet, solid state pump. Does anyone know what type I should buy, what psi etc and perhaps any other views? I will change all petrol pipes for ethanol resistant ones at the same time. The pipes under the bonnet are currently braided ones but surely these are just cosmetic. I don't think the pressure in these warrants the braiding. I was hoping to just buy a length of appropriate tubing and make up replacements to lenghth.

Jan T
J Targosz

Jan,

I did some research on this recently and according to Facet's web site, https://www.facet-purolator.com , the one to get is 40106. You can get their kit FEP12SV which comes with all of the fittings to install it.
Martin

If you fitted a new set of properly adjusted points along with a modern bdd supressor the original pump will be good for a very long time at much less effort and cost.

We include a pump service (clean or renew points and adjust) every 5 years for customers' cars, it's a minor effort and keeps the pump completely reliable.

And we have also reverted a lot of Facets back to SU because the owners couldnt stand the continual noise.
Paul Walbran

Jan,
a solid state conversion or a complete replacement SU is also an option. I have one in my 1300 and it just works. It also looks original and is a straight swap.
The B will be getting one when/if it's ever finished!

Best of...
MGmike
M McAndrew

I should add that at 5 years the attention needed is minimal if at all, a case could easily be made for 10 year intervals.
Paul Walbran

I'd say 20 years plus trouble free from an su points pump. And I'd say that from personal experience. After 45 years with my Sprite, I'm on my 2nd su pump, with the 1st fitted with new points and kept as a spare.

What glass bowl? Do you mean a plastic filter? Or do you mean a mechanical pump?
anamnesis

Don't bother farting about with SU or paying the silly premium for the SU brand logo - get a Hardi, fit and forget. No need to worry about pressure or ticking. You can get decades of trouble free use, confirmed by at least one MGA owner, fit and forget.

ETA: the square Facets are noisy buggers even on the rubber bobbins, the cylindrical one I had was better but a Hardi style one would have been better still.

I fitted a QH one 15 years ago and just left it only, not touched it once or three times in that period, fit and forget.





Nigel Atkins

Anam,
glass bowl could be fuel filter or filter/regulator (not required with the Hardi type pumps) but Jan will confirm.
Nigel Atkins

Thanks for the prompt replies. I should have been more specific about the "glass bowl" It is one of the slightly more expensive in line filters - a short glass tube with two end caps. I previously converted the SU pump on my 1954 TF to electronic points but it never worked properly so I fitted a Facet. It did tick constantly but it wasn't too bad. I reasoned that to convert the midget's pump I would need the electronics kit and a new ethanol resistant diaphragm so a new Facet was probably about the same cost. Regarding the braided fuel lines I recently helped a widow sell her late husband's MGB. The garage reeked of petrol and I suspected one of the clamps on the braided lines needed tightening. When I tried to do this one of the pipes crumbled in my hand. It wasn't possible to see the condition of the rubber due to the braiding. Whether the problem was E petrol or age I don't know but I am going to fit new flexi line to the midget.
J Targosz

Electronic is likely solid state, ie. No points. Electromechanical is points. I don't know fromexperience how long term reliable solid state is, but it should be pretty good, one past the beginning of the bathtub curve.

Irrespective of annecdotes from people who don't like them, sorry Nigel, points in su pumps have proved themselves reliable and eficient in su fuel pumps, over and over and over again. Yep there are stories of banging the pump or the floor to trigger the pump; I've done it myself, hence my 2nd pump after 20 plus years. That's after yonks and yonks and yonks of trouble free service, and all it needs is a new set of points to renew it. PLUS, the ability to bang the floor or pump to get you going again, is excellent, and FAR better than being stuck by the side of the road with a failed solid state.

Hardi look like good pumps, and qh no doubt make good pumps. But I don't see any real evidence that SU pumps are inferior at all; quite the opposite. But they do look expensive comared to hardi these days.

Personally, I'd put in a new set of points, circa 13/14 quid.

Personal choice really. But sounds like the only pump to avoid is the noise from a facet.
anamnesis

Anam,
yes if the existing SU pump can be repaired and give many more years of reliable trouble-free service that would be the way to go.

Note Jan put he tried the very, very expensive SU electronic pump on his TTF and is was no good.

I'm not sure how you can rate the expensive SU (points) pump as superior to the lower cost Hardi and as you use your car regularly you'd probably not know of the sticking SU points on cars that are laid-up/hibernating/used very little.

I can't remember now but I think the MGA chap said the Hardi pump had been on his car 25 or 30 years, no hitting it or servicing work, just fit and forget.

Nigel Atkins

Jan,
the crumbling rubber hidden under the braid may have very little or nothing to do with ethanol as rubber has been a problem for years. Try searching piss poor rubber in the sections and you will find plenty of threads about poor quality rubber parts. I had trouble with rubber fuel hose going back at least 16 years which is well before E5 or E10 in this country.
Nigel Atkins

Jan, to pre-empt trouble that I could see coming I fitted ethanol proof fuel hoses to the D class Lifeboat.
I used Gates hose, the spec to look for is SAE30R14T.
I just had a rummage on the Internet and found that lo-and-behold Moss Europe (of all people) sell it by the metre.
I've had no issues at all with it and recently used the same stuff for the pressure washer and the diesel hoses on the genset aboard the Severn Class boat.
(I've nick the surplus for my car lol).
Hope that helps.
Greybeard

The mga bloke said. And the Sprite bloke(me) said, 20 plus years. Actually, doing the sums, I bought my Sprite from a breakers in 1977. It was 11 years old. No evidence at all it had had a new su pump. Very reasonable to assume it was original. It first caused me trouble in a 1990 trip to Spain. That's 24 years. I cleaned the points and it didn't cause anymore trouble until years later when I bought a new su pump early this century, and put new points in the original, now my spare.

I didn't actually say the su was superior, I emphasised that there was no evidence to support it being inferior. 😁.

My Sprite was laid up in my garage for almost 3 years, 2008 to 2011, when I went to live in the philippines and rented out my house, with my Sprite sealed in a self constructed ventilated wooden box to protect it from the tennants. When I came back, amazingly the battery accepted a charge. Not only did the pump tick immediately, the stale 3 year old petrol was good enough to start it without effort.

Ok so a new solid state su one bloke used, failed when new. That's why I quoted the bathtub curve.

Horses for courses.

The trouble with these discussions/annecdotes is, if not challenged, the impression is given that part 'x' by brand 'y' is crap. When the reality is often the opposite. And owners, often new, read this stuff, and are then deceived into thinking they have to dump the falsely accused supposedly crap part x and brand y.

There is nothing inherently wrong with su fuel pumps. There are alternatives, and money is a good enough reason I guess.

Su electric/electronic fuel pumps would have been discontinued long ago, if all exagerrated stories about the trouble they cause were true. 🤣🤣





anamnesis

SU pumps are their own worst enemy ... Instead of dying completely and suddenly they respond to a thump and start up again. As Anam notes, this is a great feature....until forgetful owners, having got themselves home with a thump on the pump, then dont bother servicing it. So the inevitable happens: it conks out again and needs another thump. This time accompanied by expletives about how unreliable they are. Its a bit like not sorting misfiring spark plugs, if you do nothing to fix the problem then it wont go away.

The servicing is simple, and the extended points life from the modern bdd supressor make it a no brainer to me.

As for ethanol, my B has been on E10 for 10 years now and still on the twin SU pumps I fitted when setting it up for rallying 40 years ago. And no (braided) hose issues. And neither have our 3 Midgets or several MG Metros.
Paul Walbran

Absolutely experiences and opinions can be questioned and alternatives offered. No need to challenge as I've never said SU pumps are crap or even that the company is crap, though I've rightly said they're not always good in my experience and those of others.

As you well know if they were crap I'd say so even if it was against all the fans of the company, product or person and on the other side I'm happy to promote good products, companies and people. I very much wish I'd only ever encountered the later group.

The problem with parts that were fitted 10 to whenever years ago is that they may well not be so well made or reliable and trouble-free and continue to sell well by an old and possibly out-of-date reputation and recommendation.

Sometimes things, companies and people can be held as almost faultless just because they were popular years ago.

As SU are very popular particularly with the people here and Facet are often quoted I put up Hardi (or the type) as an alternative to those.

Have a look at the SU pump prices you'd think twice about buying them.

As always it's each to their own.

Nigel Atkins

Paul,
I don't disagree about the treatment of the SU pumps by some owners, it also applies to the cars and many parts or components on them as you point out in your plugs example.
Nigel Atkins

I fitted a Facet 'cube' type pump when I thought my SU wasn't up to delivering what was required on a hill climb. The problem turned out to be elsewhere but I've been perfectly happy with the Facet for nearly 10 years. I agree that, even mounted on rubber bobbins, it's noisy, but I'm quite deaf so it doesn't bother me though I can certainly hear it clattering if I've picked up an air lock due to fuel surge in hard cornering - I just have to make sure I've got at least 1/4 tank before starting a run.

I keep the Sprite's SU as a stand-by. It's got a couple of lengths of tube and cable with crocodile clips attached and comes in very useful for pumping fuel in and out of the tank, especially when I need to remove the tank when welding.

Way back in the '70s, in my ignorance, I was happy to live with getting out and giving my Minor's SU pump a clonk to get it going again. That was until I was overtaking two trucks on the M5, as I drew level with the front truck's cab the engine cut out and I was coasting. Fortunately the second truck driver must have realised that something was amiss and opened up the gap so that I could dive through to the hard shoulder. I replaced the points and kept a close eye on them after that!

Colin
C Mee

The great thing about Su pumps, and Hardie ones, come to that, is that they give the opportunity for owners to discuss and regale others with stories of success or failure.
Like the time on a dark wet night in Yorkshire when my SU needed a belt with a wheel race over 50 times on a 70 mile journey. But even so, it still got me home.

Or my brand new NOS still in its original box, Hardie kept for emergency use that refuses to pump fuel.
GuyW

Guy,
it might be you have a cheap Hardi copy if yours is a Hardie. 😉

I once had to take a day's holiday because the (twin) fuel pump failed on my V8 conversion B roadster and I couldn't use the car. It was a wasted day so I wasn't going to let that ever happen again.

I only have cars to drive and no interest in doing more servicing and maintenance than is really necessary (and in the good book of course).

I've had enough cars breakdown or not-starts already to last me three lifetimes and I'd sooner be at the pub or home rather than with my underpants over my trousers being a roadside repair warrior. It is much more important that I'm at either place than nursing a car so it has to take me there regardless or I am even more miserable than usual.
Nigel Atkins

These things can go wrong for all sorts of reasons. A couple of weeks ago I was in south Wales for a few days, and half an hour into the return journey the fuel pump stopped. Nothing I did could get it going. Long story short, it took me 12 hours to get get home, with a relay of 3 recovery trucks - the last of which took 4 hours to arrive. Back in Salisbury I took the 18 month old pump back to Burlen, who found that the grub screw that fixes the magnet that switches the Hall effect diode had fallen out. I could not have fixed this in the field as I didn't have the right Allen key. The Burlen chap advised using some thread lock on it. I refrained from asking why they had not done that in the first place.
Les Rose

Nigel, however my fat fingers, or more likely my not-so-smart phone chooses to spell it, the blue cap on the end has the Hardi name and logo on it. The point, perhaps, of the tale was I had carried it in the boot for some years as a emergency spare back up, all ready for a rapid roadside swap over should the SU fail again ( which it hasn't). Only when I decided to use it to empty the fuel tank on the other car did I find that it doesn't actually work. Still, it looks shiney and new so it must do some good
GuyW

Guy,
why carry a spare - and if you must then why not check that it is fully functional before you carry it as an emergency back up. It's like people who carry a spare wheel and tyre for years and then the one time, in years or decades, they actually need it they can't use as its totally flat.

If you really must carry a spare, whatever, then it'd be best that it's the part taken off the car as you then know it fits and is fully functional (or at least was at that time) and in it's place install the new "spare" part and give it real world testing on the car and leave it there until it breaks or fails.

Send it to me I might be able to get it going, I know nothing about mechanics or electrics but I able and willing to read fitting instructions. 😁

Having put that I lent a very cheap plastic syphon pump to a mate (to change his diff oil) and I forgot it wasn't working and I was going to check it out and keep it or throw it. It didn't work for him so I got it back, checked it, tried to get it working, failed, and threw it out. I didn't feel bad about lending it to him as he'd lent me a new compressor he'd bought and despite me downloading instructions just in case I couldn't get it to work. The motor factors replaced it for him as it was faulty from brand new (not Hardi or SU brands).
Nigel Atkins

Les,
that sounds typical of Burlen staff's customer training. A mate told me the Burlen owners make more money on pedal car parts so the SU/Burlen side is even less customer focussed than it was before! They're relying on old loyalty and a captive market to put up with them.
Nigel Atkins

Exactly Nigel. It was a salutary tale just for you, about not relying on your favourite ultra reliable Hardi brand pumps without a pre test, when in fact there was nothing wrong with my 50 years old SU.
There, now I've gone a jinxed it!
GuyW

Guy,
I'm not sure it's the Hardi at fault. 😉
Nigel Atkins

Now now chaps. Kiss and make up, as Nelson might have said to Hardi. 🤣🤣.
anamnesis

We do not want any ‘points’ scoring!
M Wood

Is "Nelson" another make of pump then? 😉
Bill Bretherton

Direct to the point, it is indeed. 😅.

https://www.next.co.uk/style/st807872/129249

Handy if yours won't go, you may be able to walk home in comfort. Lol.


anamnesis

Yes, the points were a bit scored, more pitted I would say. A quick polish over with a fine stone soon sorted that. I have a few stones from a cylinder hone machine that an engineering shop once gave me which are really useful for this sort of thing.
GuyW

And the winner is . . . M Wood of Strathclyde, United Kingdom.

Congratulations, your choice of prize is a virtual fine stone or set of points.



I don't think we fell out but if there must be kissing and making up then - fine, OK. :rolling_eyes:
Nigel Atkins

This thread was discussed between 03/07/2022 and 05/07/2022

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG Midget and Sprite Technical BBS is active now.