From left to right, the shiny objects above are the big filter, the pump, and the regulator. The fuel tank would be on the far left, and the engine would be on the far right.
Most of the fuel system is located near the rear passenger wheel of the car, so I had to jack the car up on its side to work on it. It never ceases to amaze me how far cars can be jacked up on one side. It looks like Yvonne's ready to fall over!
I had to pull the main fuel feed line off of the tank, and I didn't want it leaking all over the gorram place, so I drained the tank.
At one point, it occurred to me that the drain hole was on the elevated side of the car, and that I should probably lower the car a bit to get the rest of the fuel out. Yes, you probably know where this is going. I went to lower the car slowly on the jack, so that the car would be even. With my expert jack control (easy now) I was able to level the car out slowly. However, as I went to stop the jack from lowering, I had a momentary lapse of dyslexia, and I snapped the jack open, DROPPING THE CAR CATASTROPHICALLY on the bucket I was draining the gasoline into! LUCKILY nothing ignited the fuel, otherwise surely the entire house would have burned down. I think I'm down to 3 cat lives at this point...
Of course, I handled the situation with surgical calm and control, if by surgical calm and control you mean an excess of swearing and frantically searching for a way to control the gallon of gasoline on the floor of my garage.
Eventually, I did manage to remove the stock pump, which looked quite robust and was very easy to get to once the fuel was drained. I've read that on the FD Mazda RX-7 the fuel filter basically sits atop the rear suspension and is immensely difficult to service. Thank god that wasn't the case here.
Oddly, the two wires leading to the pump were not labeled. After scratching my head for a bit, I realized that one of them had to be a ground wire (the pump is mounted in a rubber isolator, so it cannot be grounded to itself) so I used my multimeter to check continuity to another part of the body.
This is the mounting plate for the pump. I will drill this out and mount the Holley pump in this location as soon as I buy and install fittings to it.
Amazingly, this progress on the fuel system has given me a "over the hump" feeling...I'm beginning to see the light on this project. I'm looking forward to putting many more hardworking hours in!
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