The picture to the left here is my 2001 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R, Lola. Lola is fun, fast, and good looking, but far from perfect (especially mechanically). Recently, I was on a pleasant ride having just filled Lola up with gas, when she completely lost power and started feeling like she was running out of gas. As it turns out, it was actually the fuel pump dying. I considered trying to repoint the pump, but given that I've never done that before and didn't know if that would actually even fix the problem, I decided to investigate another route.
I did a ton of research trying to find aftermarket options to replace the pump because the OEM pump costs about $200 from Kawasaki. Everyone I talked to in every forum I visited said the same thing, "there are no other options, just suck it up and replace it with the OEM pump." None of those people realized just how stubborn and cheep I am :)
I didn't want to spend $200 on a stupid fuel pump, so I went about another option. I started trying to figure out what the specifications on the OEM pump are so that I could try to match it up myself. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to find out that the OEM fuel pump for my bike has a cut-off pressure of between 1.6 and 2.4 psi. However, nobody seemed to have any clue what the flow rate would be. I got guesses everywhere from 5gal/hr to nearly 50gal/hr - not all that helpful. In the end, I just decided I didn't care that much.
I called Facet, a company that makes about a million different fuel pumps and asked to talk to an engineer. The engineer I talked to told me that based on the specs I wanted it to meet, and she gave me the NAPA part number for the pump I should get. The pump is NAPA number 610-1052 and has a cut-off pressure of 2-3.5 psi and a flow rate of 28 gal/hr. I bought it from my local NAPA store and spent an afternoon swapping out all the tubing, figuring out where to mount it, and getting it connected to the same power source as the original pump.
After getting everything put back together and hooked up properly, I took Lola out for a ride (in November......in Michigan). It was not nearly as pleasant as the ride that started the whole process, but, on the other hand, she ran better than she ever has :)
Moral of the story: if the OEM version of whatever you're trying to replace seems to expensive, there's always an aftermarket alternative.........even if it's a pain to figure out what it is...it always exists
