Westach Fuel Pressure Sender

[RustyJC]

Just a word of warning to those using the Westach fuel pressure gauges. On the way home last night, my post-filter fuel pressure started reading about 3-4 PSI lower than my pre-filter pressure - normally, they're within 1 PSI of each other. Since I hadn't fueled up in over a week, I didn't think I had plugged the filter with a bad load of fuel.



When I got home, I checked under the hood and immediately smelled diesel fuel. It turns out the post-filter sending unit was leaking diesel fuel around the electrical terminal screws that go through the case. It was so bad that I had a puddle under the truck. I tried tightening the brass knurled locknuts, but to no avail. I'm guessing that I have a ruptured diaphragm in the sender. Fortunately, I had a spare sending unit that was a warranty replacement, so I changed the senders out, and the failed one is heading back to Westach next week.



If you smell diesel, or if you start getting funny gauge readings, check out those senders!



Rusty

 

[Fred Swanson]

RustyJC, do you have it connected directly to the fuel filter? You might consider putting an isolation hose between the filter and sending unit.

 

[RustyJC]

Fred,



It's remote mounted on the firewall. Using Ray's banjo bolts, I'm plumbed from the bottom of the fuel filter housing through a stainless braided hose using -4AN fittings to a Grainger gauge snubber to the sending unit. The gauge snubber is set so tight that it takes probably 10 seconds for the post-filter gauge to go full scale after startup, so there's no way it should be seeing pulsations from the VP-44. I had two post-filter sender failures before installing the gauge snubber, but both involved erratic gauge readings and "sticking" - no leaks.



Maybe this is just a "fluke" failure, but I wanted to give the other Westach users a "heads-up".



Rusty