Hard mounting your fuel regulator to the motor?

Hey guys, new here just not new to Mopars . I decided to join this community because it was long overdue. I have a 1989 Dakota that I am building a street truck out of by using my previous race motor that I had in a Gen 3 99 Dakota. Adobedude knows who I am. Anyways I had a question.

Why is it bad to hard mount your fuel regulator to the motor? I can understand vibrations may screw with the reading of your fuel pressure gauge but in the past I have hard mounted mine and never had any issues?

Any advice or thoughts? My new setup will be the same but going E85 instead of race fuel. I will also be running polyurethane mounts instead of solid mounts.

I've never heard of it being a bad thing. LOTS of people run them that way. Always had mine mounted to the motor and never had any issues.

fords mount it to the fuel rail from the factory.
no gauge, so not an issue.
that would be the only reason.if you have a gauge mounted to it, I probably wouldn't.
but the regulator itself should be fine.

Lots of people do it that way but the pros usually hang the regulator from the fuel lines in order to reduce vibration. They do a lot of stuff to keep the fuel from getting frothy with air bubbles.

Yeah well I feel like with polyurethane motor mounts, a rubber isolator between the regulator and the mount and I feel like I shouldn't have any problems. I will have a gauge attached to it and it will be liquid filled like my last one and my last gauge never had issues with bouncing all over the place and I never noticed any airration of the fuel. I am just trying to cover my grounds before I do something stupid. It's not going to be a mild motor so....that's what I'm asking lol.

This is what I have.



There is a kit from AED you can get with pre-bent stainless lines and the aluminum fittings. I made the one in the pic myself though.

AED fuel lines

They also have a bracket that you mount to the carb base and the regulator hangs off of it.

AED Bracket

I couldn't use it though because the bottom of the regulator was hitting the intake runner. I will sell it to you if you want, PM me.

The lines hold it tight enough without the bracket. I have run it like that on the street and at the track a handful of times and it's never leaked once. I've had it apart a zillion times too.

That's right, in high horsepower engines can create some serious vibrations and can lift the diaphragm off it's seat more or less during extreme vibration in regulators and in check/poppet valves in fuel injection. . Should always try to provide some vibration isolation.


Frothy air bubbles... Definitely don't want them in front of the fuel pump, after up by the engine not as much of a concern at that point.

I've mounted several different brands and sizes of fuel regs. on of the front motor plate or elephant ears awith no real consequences that I'm aware of I have had them hooked into a hard aluminum fuel line laying on the intake manifold under the carb. also , I don't do that anymore I think Monte Smith put on one of his comments to mount the regulator in front of the carb. so the high pressure fuel is fed into the regulator in front of the needles and seats and then reduce in pressure back to the carb.

I am going to need -8an lines from the regulator to the bowls. I'm running e85 and est. 600hp crank NA. So I think I will probably have to make my own I'm sure. I haven't thought about the bracket hitting the runners of the intake though...? I have an Indy 360-M and that is a pretty big intake for a small block.

If you are referring to what I was saying about my setup - it wasn't the bracket itself hitting the intake. (Victor W2) The problem is that the bracket puts the regulator right over the runner and there was no room for the fuel line. I used a 90* adapter for the bottom feed. My fuel line comes off a mechanical pump in front though so if you have an electric you have some more options. It would probably be easier with the feed line coming up the back of the motor, you could run it under the intake.

I stumbled on the way I have it set up, just wanted to see if it would work and it did since the bracket was a no-go. I called AED and they said it was fine to run it without the bracket.

If the bracket just extended a little farther back it would have been fine. Only thing I could think of was that they designed it with something other than a SBM with a single plane.

You could put it in front where there is no runner interference but then the lines become tough to deal with since the regulator is in front of the bowl.

There are other brackets out there. Allstar makes ones for 4150 and Dominator.
Allstar bracket.

Or make your own bracket if it's how you want to solve the issue, it's not that hard. The AED bracket should give you a good idea of what to do. Just won't be fancy anodized billet.

Yeah that makes more sense now. I was going to use the bracket made by Magnafuel since I'm going a full magnafuel setup and the only thing they don't offer is the fuel lines coming off the regulator to the bowls. I like the idea of running the fuel line from the back of the motor and under the intake, which God knows there is plenty of room lol! I will look into it some more and figure out how I want to go about it. I just don't have a tubing bender and cutting and fitting the stainless braided lines kinda suck haha. Thanks for the info.

Btw I have been on my phone for most of this and I am still trying to figure out the website some. Can anyone help me out to where I can find the for sale section that has engine parts, fuel components and misc items that relate to go fast parts?

Go to the Forum list. Scroll down. At the bottom of the page are the listings for the Online Swap Meet.

R.

There is no problem letting them hang by the lines themselves. We have been doing it for years. I can tell you the fuel pressure stays more stable than hard mounting, we have tried both and log all of it on a racepak. Here are a few of mine.

AS for the question on the Forum, if you go to Moparts forums and scroll down you will find for sale sections on just about everything. There is a raceparts section as well as engine and body specific areas.

Yeah I might end up not hard mounting it, IDK yet. Really it's one less thing to worry about I suppose. Coming from your pictures, the first and last picture looks almost like the 90* fitting is rubbing the base of the intake or is it just the angle? I also don't want to go down bumps in the road and then cause the fitting or the regulator to chafe against the intake, of course now that I think about it if I have the fuel lines shorter it will raise the regulator too.

What carb? 4150 or Dominator? Hate to keep pushing their products but AED has a stainless line kit for the Magnafuel regulator with a Dominator. They do make -8 lines for the Ultra HP carbs.

Line kit

If you're not able to fab the lines by yourself, then just get what you need.

Nothing it touching anything.

Its a Pro Systems 950hp 4150 carb.

Sucks that is the kit I would probably need but its for a 4500 series

Huh. Well, maybe call them and see if they might have something that will work for you. I mentioned they do have #8 lines for the Ultra HP carbs, maybe they will be OK.

Like the bracket that wouldn't fit my situation, they probably designed the Magnafuel line kit with the idea that anyone using that regulator is most likely using a Dominator.

True, I am about to take a quick drive to the shop and figure out which style of Holley bowls I have on the carb and one of the techs from AED said depending what it is, will determine if they can go ahead and piece together a kit for me. If they have hard lines that will work then I am golden and can skip the bracket.

Cool. Let us know how it turns out.

I will as long as they call me back lol.

I see them mounted on the eng all the time. Mine is on the fenderwell but thats because I was given the lines from the reg to the carb and they were already nicely done at that lenth so it worked best just mounting it on the inner fenderwell but I mounted my friends on his eng as his worked best there. Ron

I have a 505 C.I. 400 stroker bracket motor that makes 678 HP on E85 using a 1150 Holley Dominator converted to E85 with annular boosters, it has .150 stainless needles and seats in it. I use a #6 AN Teflon lined Stainless steel hose from the Magnafuel 4 port regulator to each carb. bowl, #6 AN I.D. is .375 I was able to enrichen the jeting on the engine dyno test one jet size from what that carb. came with and lost power by being to fat with that set up. I ended up jetting it down 3 jet sizes to make max HP and torque, that was on a DTS engine dyno in Klamamth Falls Oregon which is at 4300 Ft. above sea level I have not tried jetting it up enough to slow the car down in MPH at a 1/4 mile track yet, we race at Madras which is 2500 Ft altitude and it is a 1/8 mile track IHTHs

I was wondering when someone was going to point that out. Even with a "sewer pipe" .150 E85 needle/seat, that opening is far more of a restriction than a few inches of smooth-bore .375 hose. Even less of a factor for gasoline carbs.

I like to use #6 Teflon also because it's impervious to any fuel, and also significantly smaller in diameter than the braided steel rubber hose. Doesn't cost that much more either

I talked to Patrick at Pro Systems yesterday and I could have sworn he said use #8, but he assured me that #6 would be fine. Sorry for the confusion