I have a carbed 350 in my camaro i picked up with a dead fuel pump. I rigged up an external fuel pump just to get the car driving, but ive been through 2 pumps in 2 weeks! I dont know if its just crappy autozone pumps, or something is wrong. The internal pump is still in the tank. Is this causing issues?

 

Probably. It creates a great strain on an external fuel pump to try and suck fuel through a dead in-tank pump - too much restriction.

Your best alternative is to remove the intank pump and replace it.

Also, you need to be using a return-style regulator with the intank pump - important for the excess fuel to return to the tank - this cools down the intank pump and extends it's life alot - not to mention the fact that a dead-head style regulator cannot handle the pressure from an intank FI pump.

Other alternatives include removing the intank pump and replacing it with a carbed pickup line so that you never have to replace it again, then using either an external electric pump or a mechanical pump on the block.

 

I got under the car yesterday and found that the car actually dosent have an in-tank pump. It had an external pump right at the tank. I hooked the pump directly to the battery and NADA, so i guess the pump was shot. Really sucks. It was a Holley blue pump. I replaced it with another autozone pump for now.. does anyone know if these holley pumps can be rebuilt?

 

THey can be, go on their web site and you can download the instructions for it. HOWEVER...I would not use it.

I had a mechanical pump on my car until i swapped motors and my new motor can't use a mechanical pump so I put a holley blue pump inline with my fuel line and ran that. In 8 months I went through three of those. IF your car is one of the cars with an in-tank electric pusher pump (you wouldn't know untill you dropped the tank most likely) that was to help the mehcanical pump with vapor lock, it'll die fast because it's not designed to pull through one of those pusher pumps.

ALSO, those blue and the black pumps are designed to be gravity fed, so every time you start the car, the fuel has to be pulled back "up" through the lines, over the tank and down to the blue pump...so the pump is running dry and really hot for those few seconds which drastically drops it's life span.

I bit the bullet and bought and intake 255lph pump, wired it upwith an external harness and more than 9 months now with no issues. Make sure if you do this, or even with the blue pump, that you run an adjustable regulator to get back down to 6psi or so.

Sure, it took me a weekend to do it with some friends and set me back a couple hundred bucks but...it was totally worth it if you ask me.

 

You wouldn't know from under the car if it has an intank pump or not - the ONLY way to know is to drop the tank and look inside.

If this is a real GTA and not any old Bird with GTA emblems, then it would have come from factory with a 5.7 litre TPI motor, and thus it would have had a factory intank fuel pump.

So, in my opinion, you still need to drop the tank and see what exactly is inside - there's no telling how/what was modified (if anything) - since 90% of folks do these things wrong anyway, and thus more than likely why you have the car now instead of the previous owner (because the PO did it wrong, gave up, and sold it to you).

 

Sorry, this is a camaro. The gta in my sig is long gone now.. im starting over. I was told that the 86 carbed camaros only came with mechanical pumps from the factory? Regardless, the engine runs great now with the pump removed and my pump under the tank.

 

I'm glad it's working for you!

Just be careful with those pumps like you have them mounted. If you let it sit too long, the fuel will go back into the tank and then the pump pulls "dry" for a few seconds until the fuel gets to it which is how the pump stays cool. This can drastically reduce the life of the pump.