Last night I was using the Facet fuel pump supplied by Van's (2001 aircraft 500 hours) to empty my left tank. I noticed that after pumping around 3 gallons the sound of the pump began to change (to more of a rattling sound) and it stopped pumping. After that I would have to shut the pump down, let it "cool" for a couple of minutes and then it would start flowing. Sometimes it would fail, but then start pumping again after a few seconds.
It is possible there is debris in it, I haven't removed it yet.
While it was pumping it would put out 22 GPH according to the Floscan. The pump is rated at 30 GPH.
My typical fuel pump test during the condition inspection has been to place the plane in a nose up attitude and determine the amount of fuel pumped by the electric pump in a 15 second time period (I only recently installed a flow guage). My new procedure will be to run the pump for about 7 minutes.
It was interesting that the failure mode was such that it would be transparent during normal pre-flight or inflight operations and would only reveal itself when the engine-driven pump had failed.
Just a data point.
John Allen
It is possible there is debris in it, I haven't removed it yet.
While it was pumping it would put out 22 GPH according to the Floscan. The pump is rated at 30 GPH.
My typical fuel pump test during the condition inspection has been to place the plane in a nose up attitude and determine the amount of fuel pumped by the electric pump in a 15 second time period (I only recently installed a flow guage). My new procedure will be to run the pump for about 7 minutes.
It was interesting that the failure mode was such that it would be transparent during normal pre-flight or inflight operations and would only reveal itself when the engine-driven pump had failed.
Just a data point.
John Allen