A Quiet SU Fuel Pump

I don't know that I have experienced this before. I have two fuel pumps on my Healey. Since I bought them at different times and it has been awhile, my memory says that one is the points type and the other is a dual polarity electronic one. Anyway both have always given the traditional ticking sound when first starting the car. I usually switch from one to the other each time I take the car out, but recently the left one has stopped ticking.

At first, early this driving season, I noticed that it didn't tick as much. Many times when I first start the car for the day I would turn on one side and let it pump up then turn on the other side and let it pump up. This assured me that they were both working and that the system was fully charged. So the left one started to tick only a few times. I was concerned that it was failing, but I deliberately drove on that pump to verify that it was working or failing and I never ran out of gas. So the last few times out I would keep the circuit on that quiet pump to see if it would fail. It hasn't and I end up driving along for a good outing and never running out of gas, but It doesn't tick at all anymore.

Is that a little strange? I wonder why it is continuing to pump, but doesn't tick? Any thoughts?

Re: A Quite SU Pump

I don't know if it is the same but my wife always chides me when driving any of our cars, when I turn on the turn signal earlier than needed. It's an old habit, hard to break, from when I had a car with an intermittent signal and I wanted enough time to use a hand signal. Easier than fixing the problem for a lazy guy. She says the same thing each time. " You know, the flashers are built with a fixed number of clicks in the factory....when you've used them up you need a new one". Darned if she wasn't right a couple of times over many years.
Perhaps the electronic one doesn't really need to click. Maybe some smart engineer added it because they knew it would upset traditionalists if it were clickless.

Re: A Quite SU Pump

You might have something there Roscoe. The pump works but the ticker quit.