430 do you preemptively replace your fuel pumps?

No cracking on my original white cap fuel pumps, but I'm replacing them preventatively next week on my 2007. To me, it's worth the $600 or so in parts to avoid a fire! Not looking forward to dismounting the fuel tanks for access though.

 

The replacement yellow ones still crack. To my limited knowledge no one has 3D printed or designed a better cap for these when I asked my specialist if there was something out there better than OEM. This was a couple years ago.

My passenger pump is still a white cap and not yet cracked. Swapping out for a yellow cap just buys time and isn't a real and permanent solution in my mind.

Unfortunately, I was on a road trip in 2021 when my driver's side cap started weeping. You could smell fuel strongly from that side of the engine cover so I had to fill the top part of the cap with plastic weld and replace it once I returned home.

As to what causes the cracks if it's just age of the plastic, fatigue from engine heat, or combination of both I don't have a lot of faith in the yellow caps which have been sitting for who knows how long. I'm sure my passenger side's time will come due.

 

Maybe it just takes practice and some extra fiddling but you don't have to drop the tanks.

When I was in a rush to replace mine I disassembled the engine covers, strut from the engine cover, and my specialist removed my driver's side pump which has the sending unit, swapped the sending unit to a passenger side new OEM pump, and then reassembled from the top without doing anything with the tanks. Mine is a 2006 so there's no special access point, they have just replaced enough pumps to know how to do it by feel.

If that's a time savings from manipulating the orientation of the tanks or not I don't know, but it can be done.

 

Guys who change the fuel pumps ... be careful to examine and if possible smoke test the system .. i have seen people disturb hoses that crack etc and cause a hazard
So being primitive on things can ended up causing a major disaster

 

How easy are the fuel lines from the pump to replace?

I have two new pumps I tried to replace a month or so back, but the screw caps were not budging with the screwdriver/mallet method. Ended up getting the proper tool off amazon for a few bucks for when I try again. Fortunately it's cake on a Spider as I have access hatches to both.

 

I did, and ALL hoses o and from them and rollover valves. It's cheap insurance and on a 20 year old car, why not?

 

The materials used for the fuel pumps, fuel lines and roll over valves are fuel resistant, not fuel proof. They will all perish from their exposure to gasoline, its only a matter of time. If you have a Spider and have the roof out to do roll over valves might as well do it all. The vacuum system hoses are the same material and will start sweating petro chemicals too. I read up on the material they are made of. Its well known to be petro chemical permeable.