fuel pump problems on a 99 Ply. Breeze

SDE

Well-known Member
Her son had a couple of junk yard mechanics fix his car. They put a different gas tank in it, and hot wired the fuel pump. He has a power wire to a toggle switch in the car and a wire that comes out the back door and under the car, to the fuel pump. Is the stock wire connector, for the fuel pump, a 4 wire connector? Which wire is the ground and are the other three all power for different pressure requirement? How do I check the harness? If I look at this car, I would like to be able to check if the wiring harness is good, to the pump connector, and that the problem was only that the pump went bad or that the fuel line was obstructed. He had the gas cap in the house. I went to put it back on the car, and when I opened the gas filler door, I could see the ground. The filler neck was broken. He may have gotten snow in the tank and had a frozen fuel line or filter. His mechanic said the pump was bad. The next pump was bad also. They replaced the fuel filter with one one for a v8. They talked of hot wiring the pump before they hauled it away, which leads me to believe that they did not try to fix anything correctly. Until this car is road worth, they are sharing her car, and that isn't easy.
Help
Thank you
SDE
 
He had also added after market LED lights to this car. They are wired to a toggle switch in the car. I think the fuel pump switch is being run off this same circuit. They did this so that he would not forget to turn off the fuel pump. His car barely made it home last night and he said that his headlights were like strobe lights. Would the pump be cycling on and off and affecting the lights?
TY
SDE
 
This does NOT specifically pertain to that car, but a typical car in-tank fuel unit has 4 wires, motor "hot" and motor "ground", fuel sender "signal" and fuel sender "ground".

Sounds like a textbook case of "If it Ain't Broke We'll Fix it 'Til it is"!
 
the flashing lights are an indicator of a bad alternator. Sounds like time to light a match under the car.
 
They said that the gas gauge quit on 3/4 full. Maybe the harness is shot. Thank you
SDE
 
Just a few suggestions.

Junk it. It will cost more to make it right than the car is worth. You can certainly replace it with a better car for less than it will cost to make it safe.

Hot wiring a fuel pump is nothing short of criminally dangerous. You may think it does no harm, but if there is a crash and a fuel line gets damaged, you will have a rolling inferno. The high pressure pumps used in fuel injection systems can empty the tank in very short order. One little spark and whoever is in the car is going to get burned to death.

Original factory fuel systems use a combination of inertia switches and sensors to tell if the engine is running and to cut off the power to the fuel pump in the event of an impact. These are safety systems designed to protect the occupants of the car from gasoline fires. Hot wiring a fuel pump turns the car into a death trap.

You can do whatever you like, but that is my educated opinion.
 
If the battery is bad, the lights will flicker after a jump start. It's behind the bumper in front of the left front wheel.

Had a 96, original battery was good til it sat for 2 weeks at a time when I started driving truck in 02.

My sister's neons took a battery every year, being up a couple inches from the cylinder head.

The 2.0 and 2.4 will run a relatively trouble-free 1/4 million, by 99 they went to the multi-layer-steel gasket, which solved the Chrysler 4 cylinder head gasket issues. The v6 might make 150 thousand, if you're really lucky.
 
(quoted from post at 20:09:18 03/12/19) Just a few suggestions.

Junk it. It will cost more to make it right than the car is worth. You can certainly replace it with a better car for less than it will cost to make it safe.

Hot wiring a fuel pump is nothing short of criminally dangerous. You may think it does no harm, but if there is a crash and a fuel line gets damaged, you will have a rolling inferno. The high pressure pumps used in fuel injection systems can empty the tank in very short order. One little spark and whoever is in the car is going to get burned to death.

Original factory fuel systems use a combination of inertia switches and sensors to tell if the engine is running and to cut off the power to the fuel pump in the event of an impact. These are safety systems designed to protect the occupants of the car from gasoline fires. Hot wiring a fuel pump turns the car into a death trap.

You can do whatever you like, but that is my educated opinion.

Dead on right.
 

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