After sitting in traffic for two hours today the fuel in my tank must have gotten pretty hot from circulating though my engine compartment. When I pulled over to run in to a convenience store, I noticed that the rear of the car where the vent for the gas tank was absolutly stunk of gas fumes. Ive never had it that bad before. When I went to start it five minutes later it was completly vapor locked and it wouldnt start, just cranked a couple of times. It did start on the second time but it just bearly idled for a few seconds untill cooler fuel made its way through the fuel system. I didnt have this problem before because I had the stock tbi FPR cranked all the way up and it was probably dead heading the pump so the gas wasnt allowed to circulate through the engine compartment. Now for the obvious question, how do I keep my gas cool and happy rather then near boiling? I was thinking of maybe using a cooler of some sort but do they make coolers for such applications? Whats everyone elses opinion on this?

BTW, theres no muffler where the tank is, its further up under the car so thats not teh problem.

 

hmmm... something like this might work. PN 771-1007. Not too keen on mounting it on the radiator, though. An accident or collision with debris could mean a big fire. Putting it anywhere else would limit its airflow.

http://www.jegs.com/cgi-bin/ncommerc...32&prmenbr=361

 

I've honestly never heard of a TBI system getting vapor lock. It's almost impossible unless.... you had my problem a couple years ago with the bad fuel pump. The pump was so bad that it couldn't push fuel past the regulator. This kept the fuel in the supply line right next to the engine, had this for a year and it still never vapor locked! My guess is it isn't vapor lock. With carbs the fuel sits, with EFI and even some carb fuel systems there is a return line from the regulator. This keeps the fuel flowing through the lines ALL the time, making it impossible to vapor lock.
You could have an issue with your vapor canister purge or gas cap.

 

the tank is equipped with a breather. Ive always smelled a hint of gas when its 90+ but yesterday it wasnt that hot, and everytime i came to a stop i could smell the gas. It was obvious it was coming from the rear of my car when i got out. I suspect that the more volitle components of the gas are evaporating off. It was bad enough that i thought i had a gas leak, which i dont. I think the fact of having the fuel continuously circulating throught eh engine compartment is just getting it really hot. Just as an experiment, last night i noted the temperature of the tank and went out to drive the car for around 10 mins. or so. When i got back, the tank was noticably warmer then it was when i left. Probably around 90 degrees or so. As for the vapor lock, Ive never heard of it either and always dismissed it when I saw others post that an efi problem might be vapor lock but after yesterday, I beleive that under extreme circumstances, the fuel may either vaporize in the lines, which would be readily pushed out/recondenced after several seconds of pump operation, or more likely is that the fuel may just flash over as soon as it leavs the injectors when it gets very hot. Having the lines sit next to the heads and be baked by them and the headers constantly dumping heat into the engine compartment probably transferres alot of heat to the lines. I dont have an air dam either. The driveway ramp took it off after about a week after i bought the car. This means that i dont have much airflow. Enough to cool the engine off, but not enough to prevent my engine compartment from getting HOT.

P.S. my pump isnt dead heading anymore since the holley regulator is fixed at the stock pressure setting. I can hear the pump circulating fuel through the tbi. Before I knew it was probably getting close to not flowing past the regulator because the tone of the pump would drop several octaves when the pressure woudl come up. Im sure ill pay for the mistake of cranking it all the way up later...