Bike stuff - Sucking jet pump
My motorcycle has had a recall that recently came out. It can cause gas to effectively spill from the take while the bike is running.The underlying problem is that a couple of flanges in the fuel system can get cracked. On the left side is the fuel pump itself. It pumps gas from the left side of the tank to the engine to get that running. The fitting from that can crack and spurt gas out. I've replaced the fuel pump already with one that has a reinforcement to keep it from cracking.So I said the bike pumps fuel from the left side. What about the right side? I have a freakishly big gas tank (nine gallons) and leaving a few gallons on the right side isn't a nice option. That's where the sucking jet hose comes into play.There's also a high pressure fitting on the right side of the tank for that.What happens is the fuel pump pumps more fuel than the engine really needs. It gets fed to the fuel pressure regulator which then feeds the engine. What doesn't go to the engine, the overflow if you will, gets pumped to the right side of the tank (through the high pressure fitting). This sounds like a bad idea at first. The cool thing is the sucking jet hose.The hose loops through the bottom of the right lobe of the tank and flows to the left lobe with the fuel pump. On the bottom of the hose there's a constriction and an opening. The fuel, through nothing but the vacuum induced through the venturi effect, pumps fuel from the right side of the tank to the left.The fuel comes in on the fitting on the top of the round piece and flows down the yellow corrugated tube. The magic happens when it changes direction at the blue piece. It actually entrains the fuel in the tank to "follow" it up the black tube to the other side of the tank.Neat! A pump with no moving parts!So, the fitting on the right side was starting to crack. It was enough that they replaced it under the recall with a new part.Oh, and I'm getting reimbursed for the fuel pump as well. :-)