Yes that's where I'm afraid of. I already cleaned it up, the screws look quite good. The grease and dust protected it from rusting - well the head at least. The car hasn't been standing outside for more than 15 years nor driven in wet circumstances on the road On the other hand the sweating has turned into "dripping" so I'll have to open it up at some point. If this breaks the assembly I'm all for making a surge tank and additional pump in the front, downside is this is an easy € 500,- thrown away (again).
you can replace the main pump with a MK1 GTI type inline jobber, then all you need is a generic swirl pot to sit in front of it with 3 or 4 ports and make a bracket to hold it all up there
The main pump is the one in the tank or the one in the accumulator on the picture? If it's the second, I could just as well make it all in the front, right? And exactly that is quite expensive, swirl pot, pump, fuel lines, not to mention the dash connections. I'm hoping to be able to remove this in one piece and it's the rubber. In the end this system is working exactly the same, right, to avoid fuel starvation in corners.
the pump is inside the tank, the accumulator is on one side and filter is on t'other. getting a tank which takes the original pump is whats expensive, if you use a mk1 golf external inline pump you can use any 3/4 outlet aftermarket swirl pot which are cheapy cheap. back in the day I used to recommend the MK1 cbaby/rocco/mk2f polo one but those are pretty much NLA these days. something like this to give you an idea of what I mean, mk3 fuel filter & carrier to the right with mk1 pump strapped to the side of it, cab/rocco/polo swirl pot on the left. me and my mate put this together for his rallye but I lost the finished pic
corse after saying that, I do a quick ebay search and find this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262809939480 or something like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325751289657
or if you're feeling flush https://www.classic-vw.co.uk/mk2-golf-fuel-pump-housing-191201043-21350-p.asp
That first one doesn't look too bad, space saver with the pump inside. Can it fit under the car, can't really tell from the pictures. What would be the (dis)advantage of mounting it all in the front? Can the in-tank pump bring the fuel there? As said, I am not looking for an investment of several hundreds again. So the last one looks really neat, but for that money I'd rather make it myself Even the solution you made with the fuelfilter 533 201 511 A as accumulator, it's available but also not too cheap. It looks like which ever way it's put together, a new pump and swirl pot or alike will be the biggest cost (and the dash connector for € 30,- a piece)
Well the screws are removable without problems. The thing is, when the pump is loose the complete tank seems to drain. And it's filled up obviously... I'll order a rubbber and drain the tank before I try again.
Well I drained the tank and fixed it today. The rubber wasn't too bad but it was the corroded housing which I suspect to be the cause. I cleaned it up nicely with the steel brush and a small flat screwdriver so the surface was smooth again. I cleaned the exterior side of the pump as good as possible too. Then fitted a new rubber and mounted it all back. When mounted, I can still rotate the pump in the housing. The screws are tightened to the max. Apart from this I also found a teeny tiny oil leak in the oil pan. It's on one of the welds of the baffles in the sump. I'll try a small drop of decent glue on that to fix it.
