Autocrossing my car today, I did two runs with no problems, and then let my friend drive the car (his new 5.0 Mustang has electronic gremlins LOL), and the car developed fuel starve issues. We thought it was just too low on gas, put 3 gallons in, and still fuel starved on course. I took the car to the gas station, filled it to the brim (another 4.7 gallons) ... but still fuel starve issues on course.

Basically any hard left-hand turn trying to get on the gas, it would fall flat on its face then a couple seconds later when the car was perfectly straight, power would be normal.

I drove it some when I got home, and it had no problems while in a straight line, but still died on hard left turns.

It's a fairly stock L98, and I've never had fuel problems before.

Pat

 

I took it to a shop that's really familiar with F-Bodies (although maybe not a lot of thirdgens pass through), and they dropped the tank and found this inside the tank:




Basically one hose was going from this widget to the fuel pump, and another hose was coming out the other end. It wasn't secure in the tank, and they suspect that it would flop around interrupting the flow of fuel. They have no idea what it is, so they replaced the hose/widget/hose combination with just a single hose. I just picked the car up yesterday so I haven't autocrossed it to see if it's fixed.

The car was originally carb'ed but has an L98 in it now. Although it has an extensive autocross history, I'm not sure how much bastardization has gone on with it over the years.

 

It looks like this was the culprit of my fuel-starve issues. Did two autocrosses this weekend, 12 runs total, and had no issues whatsoever.

Pat

 

Thanks for following up and making sure that other people know what caused the problem and what the solution was. This site is unfortanately not seeming as helpful as it once was

 

Yeah, I hate doing searches and finding threads that appear like the gremlins I'm trying to chase only not to see a resolution.

Oh and a guy on another forum said the widget is a fuel pump damper.

Pat

 

I have one of the pulsation dampers floating around somewhere. Wonder why they originally put it on? Also wonder why it only caused problems on left hand turns? Maybe its got a grudge against NASCAR?

Id guess that maybe it broke down and started coming apart inside, and started acting like a one-way valve. I think those basically just have a diaphram in them that allows some expansion and contraction to compensate for the pulses from the fuel pump.