Fuel cell help! (Page 1 of 3)

What he said plus if you can isolate from driver with metal firewall you don't need an ATL cell you can use a Jaz style cell that has a metal box with plastic bladder. Make sure that you buy with breather and return and pick up capabilities.

-deleted, double post-

The offroad guys are the ones who typically have the larger cells on craigslist.  Something to also consider is the extra weight you are adding in the weight of the tank/bladder itself and fuel (6lbs/gal). Since its a fairly small/light car to begin with, the overall percentages are affected to a greater extent than if you put this in a crown vickie.  Seems like there was a miata team on here that said the bigger cell ruined the handling and they kinda wished they hadnt gone to a big cell.

Small data dump.

Fuel pickups.
Most cells come with "duck bill" pickups in them. They aren't great and usually start to starve for fuel with a couple gallons left, sometimes more. There are two main options used right now to get around this.
1. The new Holly Hydramat. Works amazingly well, but realize that it will give you zero warning that you are low, you will simple stop getting fuel.
2. A system that uses the walbro puck style pickups. For example I have a system that uses 4 of these, one in each corner. They work great, I have run the cell to within a gallon of empty in the past.

Pumps. You can run an external or internal.
External - make sure to mount the pump below or at the bottom level of the fuel cell. That way gravity helps feed your pump and it lives longer. Run an AN line to the top plate of the cell and inside connect to your pickup style of choice. There are a few universal in-line pumps out there (walbro 255, Bosh 044, etc). Or for a cheap alternative, get a pump for a 1989 Ford E series van with the straight 6. It's an inline almost identical to those others, but for less money.
Internal - you have a couple options.
1. A simple pump hooked up to one of the pickup options mentioned above mounted low in the tank.
2. A simple trap door style surge tank mounted low in the cell with the pump pushing out
3. A complex surge tank that uses a low pressure pump to pull from some pickup setup from above that fills the surge tank where a high pressure pump sits and pushes out.

Of those an external pump is the cheapest.

You may not have anything outside the cell that might look like another tank. So no external surge tanks. If you want one it must live inside the cell.

Plumbing is easy. Decide on your pump setup. On the top of the cell you will have 3 lines connected.
1. Fuel supply. This will connect to your main OEM fuel supply line. You can use a very short section of soft fuel injection hose, you can put a flare to AN fitting on the OEM hardline, or find another method of adapting.
2. Fuel return. This should just be attached to your OEM return line from the fuel rail.
3. Vent tube. A long tube that comes out of the cell, raises above it and makes several loops, and then goes down and ends below the bottom level of the cell. This allows the cell to vent, but stops it from siphoning gas out if you roll over.

Hope some of that helps.

Now that Hydramats basically run you dry with no warning, and level sensors only help when you're standing still, is there some kind of reserve warning that might be conceived using a cheaper on/off capacitance sensor some distance above the bottom of the cell?

When you start seeing the light flicker and come on and off you at least know you're down to say an inch of fuel.

Once your car is dialed in, it is just time management.  There are plenty of teams that realistically learn their fuel burn at their fastest, add a buffer and base stints on that.

Install a 1 gallon sump with a separate fuel pump.
Hydromat sucks the bladder dry and the car stumbles/dies flip the switch and RTB.
If you want to get REALLY tricky, make the reserve switch a momentary on switch that
energizes a normally off relay wired to keep itself on once activated. Hit the master kill switch to kill
all power and the relay shuts of making sure that you don't drain the reserve while on track.
Wire in another relay that is normally on that shuts of the main fuel pump when reserve pump is activated,
and resets when power is killed.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/22-Gallon-Road- … mp;vxp=mtr

Sell the dry break to pay for a normal fender mount filler. Plumb it, put a pump on, and install a return fitting in the fill plate. You'd be just slightly over $1k.

You can do it with a switch over solenoid and having 2 pick ups. Easier and cleaner.
You can set up 2 pick ups, such that is 1 is higher then the other in the tank. Think motorcycle, and how fuel tank is setup.

hydromat is great if you want to use all the fuel in the tank, But think about how long a driver going to be driving.
Your fuel cell may be much larger that what driver can handle, in terms of time. Then if you have like 2-3 gallons of fuel spare, then you dont have to rely on the hydromat. Just my thought on this.

A new cell doesn't erase problems a used cell may not have... To quote myself from an old thread.

"We ordered an ATL 24 gallon cell with a baffle, fuel pump, gauge, etc all installed.  Hooking everything up was straightforward.  Unfortunately the first time it was filled it leaked.  We just sent it back and I have to call there today to see what the hell is going on.  By having everything installed at the factory I thought we could avoid this type of issue, but I was wrong.

Kinda frustrating when a $2400 fuel cell prevents you from completing a race you spent over a 1000 man hours preparing for (Metro build) and $1200 to enter... Must've been why we got "I Got Screwed" award.
So... I'm not sure paying for a cell to be put together is any better than doing it yourself."

I found this post while I was googling "Lemons fuel cell help". I was shocked to hear about the problem you had with such a high dollar set up!  I know how it is trying to prep for a race.