John, my reasoning is simple, I've had too many manual fuel pumps fail, while out on the road. I was simply tired of making multiple road side repairs only to find that the replacement manual fuel pumps (that had all been rebuilt by an individual from the North East) were no good! One pump lasted less than 1oo yards on the highway
. In my opinion (
based on my experience) the electric pumps provide a number of benefits over the mechanical pumps, one that has proven to be especially helpful is the constant fuel pressure provided by the electric pump. Constant fuel pressure at speed provides instant throttle response and at idle (
like when you are sitting at one of the seemingly never ending traffic lights) the pressure delivers liquid fuel to the carb, not giving it a chance to vaporize... that has vanquished
Vapor Lock in my Flatheads. As I mentioned, I keep a 'known to be good' OEM pump with me incase of a failure of the electric fuel pump, not
Vapor Lock. I should mention that in over fifteen years of driving Flatheads with electric fuel pumps, I have not had any reasons to go back to the manual pumps.
I like to convert the manual pumps to 'pass through' pumps just to keep things looking 'stock' under the hood.
