i recently posted this in another forum, but i thought i might share my recent experiences with diagnosing and changing a fuel pump with you here.

A couple of weeks ago, i go out in the morning, jump in the 4.4 Rangie (the wife's usual transport) to go to work, fire it up and it quickly splutters to a halt, She sometimes does this (the car), especially if you turn the steering.
Restarted, few seconds of splutter and coughing and dies again, now just cranking. Phone a friend (starting to sound like a familiar quiz show) for a lift and come back next day with some diag gear, no fault codes found in EMS or immobilizer. Converse with trusted mechanic mate who agrees with me main suspect is fuel pump. next morning used my own diag gear to force fuel pump to run (any ones can likely do that, but fortunately i have my own) but no matter what i just can't hear jack, and i am sure you normally can. Lift seats and carpet and undo cover plate over tank, run Pump, give top of it a bit of bang and sure enough what sounds like bag of marbles spinning in the fuel (half tank) can be distinctly heard. start the engine and she (always seems to be female) runs for a few mins before engine and marbles both stop. I Phone the dealer for price/ availability of pump, quoted 1000 Euro and enough time to paint the cistene chapel. I Phoned a friend in the parts dept at a UK dealer. quoted 300 GBP (about 333 euro ) and day or two :thumb: .

Several days later i have new pump (monster item about a foot long with combined level sensor arm and float) and set of instructions from GTR. It says special tool needed to remove locking ring which i could have waited to borrow but in the end i gave it a go without and it turns out that a well aimed / angled screwdriver to biff the ring round was easily sufficient.

Started Saturday AM by disconnecting battery, always a good start, but according to instructions, it must in this case be done with Key out else some memory of position of fuel sender issue arises. I skipped on the drain tank part of instructions.
Next assumed yoga like access position and tried to figure out how to unclip 2 right angle fuel pipe connections, colour coded pipes make it easy to not forget which will go back where. Instructions not much help, just say "unclip" but Red locking ring needs lifting up while connector pushed down and then both lifted off. Bit tricky but they did eventually "unclip" Wiring connector comes of easily, slide to lock mech type.
Biff locking ring round working alternate angles till loose enough to spin by hand and remove. I hope i do not need to comment that i was not smoking :naughty:
Pulled unit up to "remove" as per instructions but after about 6 inches stopped by instruction ommited pair of pipes going into the side of the unit on what looked like a wiring multi plug.
Tried all angles in attempt to comply with instructions before throwing them away and noting i would have to detail things more accurately for members of RR.net
Inspected new unit to find release mechanism for these pipes, noted new unit had o ring on pipe one but not on identical partner. Realizing that once pipes were released and it could easily become more of a fishing weekend, i looped some string around one of the pipes first and handed them to my assistant (wife) before flexing open the release spring barb and easing the pipes connector block out. Interestingly there are also 2 wires connected via same block.
Only a little twisting more and the whole unit came out. You have to keep it upright as some fuel stays in it, but it was easy enough to keep upright and de yoga with it until outside the car without any spillage.
I had bought a new seal (GBP 7.00 ish) and unwrapped it but when figuring orientation i saw it had a huge split in it
Re used the old one with a clean and lube, which to be fair seemed fine anyway. Noted the old unit only had one o ring on same side stub and was sure i had not dropped one so felt better about it.
re assumed yoga position and carefully Inserted the new unit, and with some fiddling with pointy pliers managed to get the pipe block to slide on and latch.
pushed the unit down the rest of the way noting the rotational orientation dog, but it seemed to bottom out about 2 inches too early like something was under it.
From memory i knew this was yet another omitted from the instructions aspect and try as i might, no amount of twisting turning or angling helped.

After several minutes and some helpfully intentioned input from the assistant, Is it the right one, has the tank shrunk, did something fall in, perhaps the fuel is in the way, i reached the familiar "try applying brute force" stage when i discovered that the top plate is actually spring loaded up. Ah so that's what the legs and springs part is all about.

Fortunately, i had not reached the "why don't you shut up and go and make me a coffee" stage with my assistant and between us we managed to hold the down and get the locking ring on enough to hold it and be biffed round tight. :dance: I could now see the light at the end of the tunnel and for once it was not someone carrying a torch walking toward me.
I had made a mental note about which colour of pipe went where, However in reality, after the event, it proved to be a faint detail, and i wished i had took a picture or wrote something down, but with a 50/50 chance, faint was good enough.
I plugged it up, de yogered, played the thought you had the key game with my assistant, before looking in my own pocket and started the car. Started as usual, coughed a second and then resumed to run fine.
Re yogered for a minute to listen to the tank / pump and instead of marbles heard a satisfactory remington lady shave like buzz.
Put cover on, carpets back etc gave it a spin round the block before smugly throwing keys to assistant, now wife once more. :clap:

I have since had it pointed out on mentioned other forum that i should have used non possibility of spark inducing item (AKA screw driver) to biff ring round with and that i should have taken pictures etc to which i responded

Yea, of course i should have took pictures, i know that now, and i do thank you for pointing that out, however as i have a wife / assistant, i am obviously not going to be short of someone to tell me things that start with words like "you should have" and "I could have told you".

And yes, you are quite right that i should have considered something better than a large screw driver from the sparks point of view, although it was big and i biffed gently, so not too much damage risk.

However, i am sure if i ended up with singed eye brows besides a burning L322, that i would have certainly got the double whammy of "I could have told you that you should have used something that would not spark".

Seriously though, i don't know what i would do without her, have to take the car to the car wash myself i guess

Dunno about you, but i always find adding "sense of humour" to any list of requirements for all such jobs is a must

hope you enjoyed reading as much as i enjoyed writing

warmest regards to all 2003 4.4 HSE

Out of interest at what mileage did your pump fail? I've passed the 100k mark and there always seems to be something that needs replacing these days... 

It's a really shameful story really, from memory, i don't even think i have passed 40K with it yet. Its still got its original tyres on and they still have about 30-35 % life left.

List of replacements to date
EAS Compressor
Instrument pack (usual pixel problem)
Headlamp levelling ECU
Front Door cards (near 700 GBP each)
lower windscreen trim panel (usual buzz at speed)
Steering column
Radiator
Air Conditioning condenser matrix (whole dash out for that, took me 2 weeks), i have some piccies somewhere, i might even do a post on it.)
Prop done (usual dealer thing)

I now need to replace my Multi function display unit, (loads of missing pixels)

There have also been a number of other problems, Fuel, oil & water leaks.

The AC matrix was about a year ago, although i had been loosing gas for about a year before that.

If i ever get mine up to 100K, i am wondering how much of it will be original.
Might have to start calling it Jacko

When i purchased it, the duties were like 100%, meaning around 85K
They have long since revised the tax system on new cars. They changed it to be based on CC, with it costing 7.5 pounds per CC for cars with engines bigger than 2.5 litre. 2003 4.4 HSE

I've been waiting for someone to post this

I need to take my fuel pump out as it doesn't read below quarter of a tank and it's caught me out twice (ran out of fuel) so I'm guessing it's the sender unit.
Do you have to take the carpet up in the rear? I can't see any access flap etc. If so, how does the carpet come up? Is it held down with clips/screws? I'm assuming that once the carpet is up, there is a plate in the floor to access the tank? 2010 MY Vogue SE TDV8 3.6 Stornoway Grey- fully loaded

Hiya Noddy
Yea, sorry i do seem to have skipped straight to the Yoga bit.
from the start, disconnect battery, then take out the spare wheel cover, spare wheel & jack. if you have the spare wheel lifting straps, you need to unbolt their base holding blocks as they hold down the rearmost edge of the carpet.
Then fold & lift rear seats. remove 2 handle looking items to which seats normally latch when down.
carpet can now be raised starting from where wheel lifting strap area is, it will get stuck on wheel arch sides and you have choice to remove trim or tease carpet from under. I did one of each. There are also two round black disks, you can ignore these. Eventually you need to hold carpet against back seats out of way, i used a trouser belt through a hole in carpet to drivers head rest but beware that carpet can easily tear.

2 round plates with 4 nuts on each, you want the one on the drivers side for a RHD vehicle.
Then you get to do the Yoga  2003 4.4 HSE

Before I become the midlands yoga champ, does anyone know if this sender can be reset? To re-iterate, it doesn't read under an eighth of a tank. Still shows 80 miles on the obc then runs out of fuel. 2010 MY Vogue SE TDV8 3.6 Stornoway Grey- fully loaded

Bit of an old thread this but I used the info in the first posting over the last couple of days whilst replacing the sender in the left hand side of the tank, and wanted to pass on a couple of tips (2003 V8 car).

Even just to replace the left hand sender you still need to undo both sides because there are a pair of balance pipes connected between the LH sender and the fuel pump in the RH side.

First tip is an obvious one - do the job with as little fuel in the car as possible. I had maybe 25 litres in the tank when I did it; this was still enough to require me to dip my hand in the fuel to replace the LH sensor - about 5 inches deep in the tank maybe. If you have more fuel than this, consider using a siphon through the access hole.

Secondly - get a ratchet strap and tie the carpet out of the way. I lifted the passenger headrest and used the bars to support the strap and looped it through the reinforced holes in the carpet (you'll see these when you remove the carpet from the boot floor).

To remove the carpet, you don't need to remove the spare wheel or the jack to unbolt the straps from the boot floor. Just move the strap itself to one side and the fixing bolt becomes visible. If you just slide the boot false floor back a few inches you can still sit on it which makes the job more comfortable.

Removing the two fuel pipes from the fuel pump can be tricky. Try with your fingers using the procedure already described, but if you can't get them off then you can make a small tool which will do the job instantly. All you need is a piece of flat steel bar about 25mm wide and 2mm thick. Bend the end over 90 degrees, and then cut the small end into a U shape 10-11 mm wide and roughly the same depth (see pic). To remove, slide the short end of the tool under the locking ring and pull upwards whilst pushing down on the top of the right angle connector. Keep the two pressed together and lift upwards and it'll come straight off.

Once you've got the covers removed for the access holes, the white plastic covers are just pushed in with a rubber seal around them. Just pull hard and the left one will come out. On the right hand side it's the actual fuel pump you're pulling on, so pull firmly but be aware the whole pump is coming up and there is a connector for the balance pipe and LH sender a few inches below the top.

One final tip - refitting. I found it very hard to get the cover (LH) and pump (RH) back into place until I examined the shape of the seal (which should be replaced before refitting). The seal has a rubber lip which has to be on the inside of the fuel tank, but by pushing straight downward on either the cap or pump this lip will always stay on top making the thing seem like it doesn't fit or requires a lot of force to fit. If you find yourself having to push down very hard whilst fitting the locking ring, you've got it wrong. The solution is to carefully fit the seal into the aperture and then gently push the cap (LHS) or pump (RHS) into the seal. This is instead of fitting the seal to the cap or pump and pushing the whole thing in together. Done this way you should find that you can push the pump in and it'll stay in place while you tighten the locking ring, instead of wanting to spring back up (remember the pump is spring loaded to keep it lodged in the tank).

Note that if you don't get the seal in right then when the tank is full fuel will leak past it as it sloshes around. Ask me how I know !