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All done! Just need to figure out what I'm doing for the bushing insulators.





The vacuum diaphragm was toast, so it obviously wasn't doing anything.




There are a couple of little vent holes in here, is there supposed to be something to keep dirt from getting in?

I cut a strip of gasket paper and roll it around a bolt to form a little insulating sleeve. 2 or 3 times around is usually enough. At the vent there was something like horsehair. You could cut a little piece of a kitchen copper scrubbing pad for that.

The vent hole should have a fibrous material in it. You can see some of it sticking out on this photo of my 1951 Henney-Packard’s pump which I rebuilt a while back.

A bad vacuum diaphragm will often lead to oil burning and will usually disable windshield wipers. A bad diaphragm may allow enough oil to reach the intake manifold to cause plug fouling in two adjacent cylinders.

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Sounds good, I'll do that. I suppose the vent holes had a filter like the brake booster, also horsehair I believe.

I put a bit of polyester fill that was left over from rebuilding my seats for a filter for these little vent holes. If the judges notice I'll tell them it's unicorn hair.




The rebuild of my fuel/vacuum pump was only supposed to be preventative maintenance because I had no idea how old it was. But I was pleasantly surprised that a random miss, that I had been unable to tune away, was gone after putting the rebuilt pump on.

Regarding the electric fuel pump debate.........
After putting my fuel pump back on it was empty, and the line to the carb was empty, which I assume always drains back down after a while. I fired the car up and it ran for a few seconds, stopped and then I fired it up again and away it went. (It hadn't been started since the day before.) All that to say, I still think that if you have a good mechanical fuel pump that's all you need..............along with your original 6 volt system!

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This has been my experience too. With a good mechanical pump and a sorted fuel system I've never had any scenario where an electric pump would have been necessary.

I have my fuel pump off because I'm working on valves, and thinking about the gasket/s.

I have this, which I assumed is a fiber type spacer to prevent heat transfer, not unlike the fiber washers. Originally it just had sealant on it to prevent it from leaking. The last time I had my pump off I put this back on with a gasket on either side.

Now I'm wondering if this is just a very hard gasket and not a spacer???? The service manual doesn't make any mention of anything more than "a" gasket.







This picture is just to show where the cam is contacting the arm.



Rebuild kits from MM come with "a" gasket. The fuel pump insulator kit from MM only includes washers and bushings, nothing like what I'm holding.

Is this a spacer? Should I use it again with a gasket on either side, or just a thick gasket, or two stacked, without this "spacer"? Or maybe use the "spacer" with Permatex and no new gaskets?

Thoughts?

If it's thicker than a normal gasket, I would use that as-is with Shellac Permatex on the fuel pump side.

If it's the same thickness, I would replace it, again with Shellac Permatex on the fuel pump side.

I’ve wondered about this too. Years ago, the rebuild kits typically came with a couple thin (like paper) gaskets which I never used but they also came with a thicker one or even two with no mention of usage, although these days probably only a single thin gasket comes with the kits. For sure, I would use the thicker one and also the insulators in the holes along with the fiber washers. Since the fiber washers would break if tightened too much, the original bolt heads were drilled for wiring in place.