I spent a lot of time looking for a fuel pump with the following requirements:
1,000+ HP; it’s gotta have the juice.
Brushless: Heats the fuel less and consumes less power.
PWM’able: No way do I want to be sitting at a light with the pump pushing over 120 gallons / hour at 42 psi. That will heat the fuel and if something comes loose I want to be flowing as little fuel as possible.
In tank: Reduces external plumbing and keeps the pump cool.
Flange-mount: No brackets, clamps, hoses or wires dangling inside of the tank.
Ethanol Compatible: More power and lower operating temperature.
While many pumps met most of the criteria, the brushless/PWM’able combination was the limiting factor. At some point during my search Radium announced a surge tank designed for the FUELAB 92902 which met all of my criteria. It’s rated to 1,800HP and has an integrated motor controller. This allows me to simply connect it to one of the PDM’s PWM outputs.
Great! I immediately ordered one… not so fast. Apparently FUELAB, chasing bigger HP numbers, changed the height of their pump twice which required Radium to change their surge tank twice. So, after over a year of waiting, I finally received the pump and the surge tank.
Radium provides a filter which bolts to the bottom, an o-ring and a retaining ring with bolts — so about three minutes to install it into the surge tank.
I fabricated an aluminum bracket for the surge tank and attached it to the 2” x 2” tubes with six 1/4”-20 nutserts, two of which capture the surge tank. Four additional 1/4”-20 nutserts mount the surge tank to the bracket. I will fabricate a heat shield to protect it from the exhaust manifold.
Fuel filter mounted
I also mounted my super trick fuel filter which I wrote about. Man, it feels good to get that out of the box and mounted to the car!!! If you’re wondering what the trio of holes are to the right of the fuel filter are, they are specifically designed to reduce harmonic engine vibrations from disrupting fuel flow through the filter OR I mounted the filter in the wrong place and now need to weld the holes shut;-)