[Mini] Fueling issue

[Anne]

Hi Guys & Girls,

1st of all; happy Mini-ing again this year.

Excuses for the 'spamming' to those who are on 'both lists'.

The Van has been back on the road for about two months now and since 
then I've clocked about 2200 miles with it in 3 countries, loving almost 
every minute of it.

The only exception is when it dies again.

For some reason every now and then it seems like the petrol can't make 
it's way (fast enough?) to the carb and after some sputtering the engine 
will die alltogether.

In almost every instance I added some fuel in the fueltank after which 
it would run again for at least a couple of hours, but at times also a 
couple of days.

I haven't been able to pinpoint what is causing this as there isn't a 
really clear situation when it happens.

The Van has the tank in the back with a fuel line running under the car, 
coming up along the bulkhead connecting to a fuel filter and then to a 
(new) facet pump mounted on the bulkhead. From there a line runs past 
the rockercover to the HIF44 carb which is mounted just behind the 
grill. It has an open air filter, with a shield in front and over it.

The carb is connected with a pipe to the Supercharger.

When it has stalled the facet pump is always ratteling like crazy.
That by itself does not really say much; it can also do that while cruising.

Another thing I noticed is that in all cases the fuel filter is empty.
When it fills again the engine starts and runs no problem.
But that also is not a tell-all; at time the egnine will run (idle) just 
fine while there does not seem to be any fuel in the filter.

The first 3 times it happened while driving about 50mph on B-roads and 
stopping for about a minute seemed to help.

But it also happens while driving on the highway at about 70mph.

I didn't have a fuellevelmeter installed until last weekend, and 
initially I thought the problem arose when I had used about 16l (tank 
is/should be about 25l) so maybe not all the fuel in the tank was sucked 
up properly.

But it also has occurred a couple of times where I could only add 5-8l 
before the tank was full again. Today it started to sputter on the 
highway again and when I let it roll out to a gas station (which had 
unmarked police vehicles waiting for people to speed by, so I guess my 
Karma is still good :)), I could only get about 8l in there.

As I also suspected the tank creating a vacuum, I removed part of the 
inner workings of a fuelcap and drilled a (small) hole through it, which 
should make sure it always can get air in.

A couple of ideas I have left to try is;

1. Hook up a small light to the facet pump to see if it maybe falls 
without power sometimes

2. See if I can find a place to install a Fuel King Filter and presure 
regulator. These seem to be quite big though.

3. Use a net-stocking instead of a fuelcap to make sure it's not a tank 
vacuum issue.

4. Disable the power to the facet fuel pump to see how long the engine 
keeps running when no new fuel is coming.

5. Transfer all the fuel out of the tank, and add it again per liter to 
see from what point onwards the fuel is picked up.

The main problem is that the circumstances under which it occurs never 
seem to be the same two times in a row.

I've had a similar issue before which turned out to be an air leak in an 
old fuel line. But these lines are new and most are not of the old black 
cracking, but of the flexible PVC(?) see through type.

So long story short;

Any one you have any ideas what (else) I can do/check in order to get 
rid of this issue?

Anne
[MIBV again :]