What We Call "The Fuel Pump Affair" [Phil]

You'll recall our fuel pump developed a fault, in the form of a ruptured diaphragm. This allows fuel to enter the upper chamber, and escape through the vent into the atmosphere. The result, of course, is pretty lousy fuel economy. Unacceptably lousy. We needed a fix.

We opened two lines of inquiry.
1) We shopped for a rebuild kit
2) We shopped for a replacement

The pump is a Carter 2241S. We searched and searched, and finally didn't find any. But we did find Hot Heads Hemis, and they sell an adapter that enables use of a more recent, easily obtainable mechanical fuel pump. So we ordered the pump and adapter.

In a short while (I give these guys an A+ for dispatch) their parcel arrived, and last weekend we went to work. The adapter is truly a spacer that extends the distance between the timing chest and the pump body by about an inch. It is packaged with correct-length hex-head bolts, and a gasket, ready to use.

Access is a little tight, and one works from below and above, and below and above to plumb and mount the new parts. But in the end all was in place. Cranking the engine, however, produced no flow from the new pump. Hmmm.

We swapped input and output lines, to make certain it wasn't so simple a fault, but nope, no gas to the carb.

So we took it all apart again, and convinced ourselves there was no problem with the new pump - no, it worked just fine on the bench, and we verified which port was 'in' and which was 'out'. Then, we measured the lever arms of the old and new pumps, and convinced ourselves that the new pump may well be installed absent the adapter. Which we then did.

That did it - Without the adapter/spacer the new pump instantly delivered a healthy flow through the filter and to the carb, and presto! we were running on 8.

So if you're looking to replace that leaky old fuel pump on your 276 cu in 1953 Desoto Hemi, I recommend the Hot Heads Hemi item code 80562, description "318 fuel pump" as a bolt-on replacement for the Carter 2241S. It has minor differences, but works perfectly, and at $29.95 is not even expensive!