aurora fuel pump retaining ring problem

[fufu valve]

I recently was having problems with acceleration in my 97 aurora. Noticed the fuel pump seemed to be running constantly. Removed the access panel in the trunk and found the fuel pump retaining ring and the ears that hold it down had completly rotted away .I was wondering if any one has had the same problem and repaired it without replacing the fuel tank Dont really want to dump the price of a tank and pump into this car Any ideas would be appreciated

[atomic dervish]

I had the same issue. The solution: I dug pretty deep into the creative tool box and came up with using a thin slice of 4" PVC from a coupling with internal (female) treads and a similarly thin slice of a slotted cap with external (male) threads. From these two pieces I was able to make a "hub" held in place with a large stainless steel hose clamp (against what remained of the steel tabs), and a threaded locking ring (I hollowed out most of the slotted cap's top to create the locking ring). It was very tenuous going, but it seems to be holding. I had to buy a flexible 1/4" extension to tighten the hose clamp against the tabs, which compressed against the outer hub ring to keep it from coming up against the force of the springs of the fuel pump. Fortunately, two of my five tabs still had a horizontal component. Unfortunately, they were right next to each other ( the two forward most tabs) so they didn't offer much evenly applied downward leverage (hence the necessity for the hose clamp). Problems along the way: The o-ring that came with the new fuel pump ($300 worth of plastic), expanded beyond the diameter of the o-ring groove when left in contact with gasoline!!!! What the???? Thanks AirTex!! Pretty sure that shouldn't happen. The groove isn't deep enough to sustain a design "feature" like that. The risks: PVC is apparently not very resistant to gasoline. If the seal is leak tight, this shouldn't be a problem. If not, I'll likely be revisiting this problem not too far down the road. The rewards: Avoiding cash outlay for a new gas tank. The alternatives: I pondered a while about how to get this pump to compress down onto the gasket to create a leak tight seal.... 1. Remove the tank and drill/tap holes into the metal ring that was injection moulded into the tank wall (ceiling) on a circle just outside the gasket groove. Drill through holes in the lock ring on center with the tapped holes. Not sure how thick the metal is that is embedded in the tank. It's already rusted pretty bad on the surface. 2. Find a generic hinged ring that would serve to replace the missing tabs. Looked for a while with no luck. 3. Fabricate your own new tabs, but welding would likely be a problem because of the plastic tank. 4. cut tabs off completely, and find a threaded bulkhead fitting that would compress the pump's flange against the o-ring, but not sure how to get hardware with a larger diameter than the hole inside the tank. Hope this helps. Just finished this job two nights ago, so it's far from establishing any good reliability stats.