Saturday, June 2, 2012

GT500 Fuel Hat

Shipping this Tuesday is our GT500 fuel hat.  We call it the S197-S fuel hat, where the -S indicates it is for the steel tank cars.  It will fit 2005-2010 Mustang GTs and 2007-2012 GT500s.  It is a ground-up redesign of the previous version from Fore Precision...making it more reliable, better performing, and easier to install.


RELIABILITY
We needed to fix two major problems from the old design.  First, we needed to completely eliminate the SAE J30R10 in-tank fuel hose.  This "submersible" hose simply does not hold up to race gas or E85.  So, we eliminated this hose with our snap lock o-ring seats for the fuel pump outlets.

Second, the old Fore Precision fuel hats were plagued with fuel smells and leaks in the Spring/Summer.  We found the leaks were coming from the inside of the wire.  The stranded wires act like tree roots, and the higher temperatures in the warm months aggravated the issue.  The new design incorporates an integrated hermetic wire seal to ensure fuel leaks/smells never happen.


PERFORMANCE
Performance comes from pump availability.  Dual DCSS405s (that actually flow 440 lph each) easily outperform the old triple 255 setup.  Additionally, GT Supercar pumps and GSS342 pumps can also be installed in the new hat.


INSTALLATION
The new design is more compact with dual pumps and integrated venturi disharge and return bore.  There are no "tubes" hanging down in the fuel tank like the old design.  The in-tank crossover connector maintains the factory orientation.  There is only one feed and one return port on the top of the hat.  (no y-blocks required)


DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING
We can only show a little about how we make our fuel hats.  We do all our design in Solidworks.  Our five axis mill programming is done with HSMWorks, and our mill/turn programming is done with Edgecam.  Here are some screenshots of the assembled fuel hat:

gt500 fuel hat  




Here is a picture of a partially assembled hat, showing just the machined parts.



Below is a screenshot of the manifold's five axis toolpaths.  This is HSMWorks, which runs inside Solidworks.  The manifold itself has 97 machining operations, uses 21 different tools, and requires 18 different orientations.



...but we accomplish all that by clamping the part only twice ;)  Here is what happens in 23 minutes:

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