[alfa] Motronic Spider fuel pumps,relays

["David Jarman" <jarmanhome@xxxxxxx>]

Just as a followup note to my recent inquiry on fuel pump fusing on the S4
Spiders, I got the car running and would like to share what I found.

The fuel pump relay sits with three others under the rear shelf, adjacent to
the ECU. It is the only relay there with a pink and white wire lead coming out
of the plug-in socket (a larger gauge orange/black wire may be piggybacked
with the pink/white).  On my '91, it is the relay nearest the driveshaft hump.
The pink/white leads feed the fuel pumps, both in-tank and external.  Coming
off the relay socket, this wire goes in back of the ECU, then to a connector
lying next to the seat belt reel.  On my car, this spade connector was badly
oxidized.  I wire brushed it and applied Stabilant 22 to preserve the
connection.  I then had continuity from the pumps to the relay.

I had quickly picked up an "equivalent" plug-in relay at a local parts store
yesterday when I found one of the OEM relays bad.  However (sparing you the
play-by-play), on this relay one of the two #87 terminals was normally open,
and the other normally closed.  When I plugged this replacement relay into the
Motronic auxiliary socket, it prevented the fuel pump relay from energizing
the pumps.  Moral: use OEM style relays from known Alfa parts suppliers!
Tomorrow I'm ordering a couple of spares to keep on hand.

As I commented to a friend of mine who responded off line, the only down side
to owning one of these Spiders is that they don't ask for constant fiddling,
so your troubleshooting learning curve becomes rather drawn-out!  And that's
OK by me.
That much more time to drive them....

Dave Jarman
Lexington, KY
USA
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