1967 Ford Anglia LOL,,,THE ONE WITH 69's ON THE SIDE

Not sure I'd want to try the battery/nails welding method with lithium or nicad battery pack, possibly better with a lead/acid battery (as in car battery, designed for high current discharge) 😉

Strung up a load of 47 Ohm resistors to make 300 Ohms in total to fake up what the Zodiac gauge did. Grounded one end and I could then connect the gauge wire from zero up to 300 Ohms at 47 Ohm intervals.



At 200 Ohms the gauge reads here, which looks pretty acceptable as an ‘empty’ point:



So that’s good news. Forgot to take a tape measure to measure the depth of the tank. Pretty sure the 4” sender is the one I want, but I want to double check.

Something I'm toying with the idea of is replacing the mechanical fuel pump with an electric one. In daily use, the mechanical pump is fine, but if you leave the car to stand for any period of time the fuel drains back into the tank and you have to crank for ages to get the fuel back up. The mechanical pumps are hopeless at pulling the fuel back up and the battery invariably takes a hammering during the process. When I'm re-commissioning after the car has been standing, I usually pull the pipe off the carb and suck the fuel up myself to prime everything.

When I ran an engine with no pump lobe on the cam, I ran this Facet pump:



I noticed the car was MUCH easier to start because the fuel was always primed and the carbs filled properly before cranking. I fitted it in a bit of a hurry and it was actually mounted on a stand-off welded to the pump blanking plate on the side of the block. It worked fine but I was never 100% happy because I was concerned with the vibrations and heat coming from being directly mounted to the block. It's a lift pump, so being at the front is also not ideal though not a problem. This time round I'd ideally like to put it at the back of the car. There is literally nowhere to put it back there though, where it won't be in the way of the tank, suspension or the axle. So I think it'll have to stay at the front.

Up front, same story. I can't see anywhere to put it that I can physically get to, especially to drill any holes. I think where I put it was probably because that's all I could do with the engine in place. There are a couple of advantages of where it is though:
-It's easily accessible and I can get spanners on it
-It's right next to the wiring it needs
-It doesn't transmit any noise through the bodywork (it's a clicky pump and even rubber mounts won't stop it clacking away)

So my plan for now is to stick it back where it was but to put it on a couple of rubber cotton reels to isolate it from the engine. I think this will be fine.

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Tank / sender calculations

Tank dimensions (mm):
570 x 380 x 150 deep at gauge, 120 at back:



Radius approx 35 all round

Sender dimensions:
Arm length from pivot to centre of float: 100mm
Bottom of flange to pivot point: 38mm
Float diameter: 30mm

So the total from the bottom of the flange to the bottom of the float is around 153mm, which is more than the depth of the tank. Give or take, it would read zero when the float made contact with the bottom of the tank, so that's probably why it ran out of fuel when the needle touched the red on the gauge. Some quick tank calculations will give me an approximation of the depth of fuel needed.

First up need a rough idea how much volume the radius around the bottom of the tank takes up. Switching to cm for these calculations as it makes converting to litres easier:



That suggests it takes up about 0.5 litres.

Volumes of the respective parts of the tank:



So about 30.8 litres, minus two lots of 0.5 litres if brimmed is about 30 litres give or take. From memory, the tank is 7 gallons which is 31.8 litres so I'm in the right ballpark.

The bottom 3cm of the tank holds 1.6 + 3.25 - 0.5 = 4.35 litres. Would like another litre in there at 'empty', ideally.

Upper part of the tank 57 x 38 x 1cm = 2166cc = 2.2 litres, so a litre equates to around 0.5cm depth.

Back to working in mm now. Total depth of fuel with 5 litres in the tank is therefore around 35mm.

Someone check that please. There's a green pen in the stationery cupboard if you need one.

When the sender arrives, I can measure the approximate depth the float sits, measure the length from the top, then put a suitable bend in the wire to suit.

I don't currently carry a spare, but if I put the pump there I'd have to run the fuel line into the car and back out again. If I put it on the bottom it will be too low and will get hit by split speedbumps etc. No space on the front or back due to the chassis crossmember and the tank. It's actually way more convenient up front and since the pump is designed for front mounting I'm going to give it a crack and see how it survives.

I have the same exact fuel pump on my 127 for years now, and I have to say it's an amazing upgrade for anyone wanting to daily their classics, makes them way easier to start and overall more reliable!

Good pick and good luck with your Anglia!

How noisy is that fuel pump?

While I was under the back I remembered I needed to replace the handbrake mech hanger on the back of the axle. It's bolted to the axle on one side and the mech on the other, with a thick canvas sandwich in the middle to allow for some movement. Mine rotted through years ago and I always had a thick cable tie holding it together. I found a replacement at some point at the NSRA swap meet but it wasn't identical to the original and needed a bit of modification. For whatever reason I didn't do it when the axle was last off the car and a couple of the bolt heads were well rounded and needed grinding off, which I couldn't get to with the tank on the car. Tank is off at the mo so I'm dealing with it. Managed to actually get one of the bolts off, so that's now only one I need to cut.

The hanger isn't identical. The original had an extra 90° bracket rivetted on. I drilled out the rivets and opened up the holes to suit a pair of M6 button heads which won't get in the way of assembling the dome-top bolt that holds it on the handbrake mech. Here it is loosely assembled and I'll sort the final fit once it's on, as it sort of slides into a slot and I can't remember which way round it goes.

Thanks ducklooker.

Slightly frustrating couple of hours on the car today - but a little bit of progress. The existing fuel line is 6mm but the 8mm unions on the pump had to be rammed into it. Tank and carb ends are also 6mm, so I bought some 6mm unions to go with the new 6mm fuel line. I went for the cheaper 2192 Cohline stuff rather than the full-fat 2240, which still claims to be E10 resistant. That all arrived today which was good.

Mods to the sender didn’t quite go to plan. I just needed to put a couple of bends in the rod, but it made the joint come loose where it was swaged in. I gave it a whack with a punch to re-secure it and that seized the whole thing up. Grrr. Then I decided to take it apart, opened the pivots up a bit with a 4mm drill and spent an hour trying to get it back together and get the wiper in the right position.





I did eventually get it good again. Next issue is the stud on top for the sender wire touches the bodywork ie it shorts out the output. Pretty sure I’ll be able to just cut it down to make it clear. And then I had a better look at how to get power down to the pump. I pulled a long wire through and found what looks like a spare terminal on the ignition switch. This is convenient and should work fine.

So I’m getting pretty close. Something I want to do before putting the tank back on is just wire brush a couple of bits and whack a bit of underseal on. Then I’m happy to put it all back together.

Hello, what’s this outside my house?



Full day in the garage today. Started with the handbrake mech mount on the back of the axle. The rounded bolt head was a sod to cut through, but I eventually got through it. The new mount didn’t quite fit and needed a hole opening up a bit and slotting. Once that was done I had this:



While I was doing that, I noticed the rear exhaust mount had eaten itself. It was never a great fit because it went through an existing hole which wasn’t quite in the right place. I put a new rubber cotton reel on, put another bend in the mount and drilled a new hole in the floor. Still not brilliant but it fits much better now:



Then I fitted the new fuel line front to back, gave the underside of the boot floor and the tank a wire brush and a fresh coat of underseal, and faffed about getting the tank back on. Last job was to wire up the new electric pump. Stuck a few litres of fresh fuel in, let it prime itself and it started straight up on the first turn. On the first turn folks, a 50 year old engine that hasn’t been run for 10 months!

So I’m pretty pleased with the new pump. I’ll need to get underneath it again at some point because it’s got a very slight fuel leak at the pump. Also, my new tank sender looks a bit like it might be reading backwards. I’ll need to run the tank down a bit to confirm…