I took my fuel pump out today to see if I could clean my filter, and what do I see? A damn socket (for a socket wrench) sitten in the bottom of the gas tank. Probably is a 10mm .

Oh well, I'll get it out.

But one question. I'm looking at my fuel pump and it looks different from the one in this picture (this pic is from another member in this forum).

Mine does not have that white thing, which I assume is the filter on his. Instead, it has like a black foam piece completely surrounding that 3 inch cylinder which HIS filter is attached to.

Is that my filter?

Or did the mechanic who dropped that socket in the gas tank not bother to put a filter back on that pump?

Thanks

 

Someone has been in there and replaced the filter, and left the socket.

Once my dad found a piece of a plastic grocerie bag in the tank of a car that owned since new. Now that's strange.

 

Years ago (late 60's) a good friend of mine bought an El Camino new from the dealer. For a year or better he had a rattle in it no one could find. He had a wreck while driving this vehicle and the body shop found a small Coke bottle in the area behind the driver's seat in the wall of the car. It had a note in it that said "Took you a long time to find this didn't it?

This was obviously an employee on the assembly line that was pissed about something. I remember reading several years ago about a study conducted by GM on warranty claims. Seems the cars built on Mondays and Fridays had the highest incidence of warranty claims.

American manufacturers did not pay any significant attention to quality control until the mid 70's when the Japanese builder's share of the market increased. This forced American manufacturers into better quality control.

I bought a Ford F-150 new in 1976. A few days later I was washing it and discovered the trim missing from the right side of the bed. The other side had the trim. The dealer tried to tell me the trim was supposed to be missing and the mistake was actually someone puttimg the trim on the left side. I ended up getting the trim installed but I can state positively that quality control sucked big time back then.

 

Do you happen to know where I can pick up some of those screws for the fuel pump, that hold the entire assembly on the gas tank? I'm missing like 5 or 6!

 

Any Mazda dealer will have the screws, or just go to a hardware store and match them up. There's really nothing special about them. But if you get new ones, do yourself a favour and get stainless steel screws. The fuel pump screws have a nasty habit of rusting to the pump flange.

 

It really sounds like someone swapped in another fuel pump and did a poor job of it.&nbsp I hope the new fuel pump has just as much capacity as the stock one!




-Ted

 

Agreed.&nbsp I used to do a lot of car stereo back in the day.&nbsp Mustangs were notorious for having all kinds of extra parts laying around under the carpet.&nbsp Rumor had it that the Ford assembly plants works were told to NOT to try and pick up anything that fell into the cars, as this added extra "wasted" time to find and retreive the dropped parts.&nbsp We could count on finding lots of screws and bolts; it helps us in case we started to loose the original fasteners.



-Ted

 

either way I'd call that waste...but I guess time was more valuable then some nuts and bolts

 

I bought a used 1995 Probe GT a few years back to discover a Snickers wrapper and cap to a coolent bottle in the air cleaner box.