All Cosworth engined F1 cars that I know of had the Lucas high pressure fuel pump. I believe Ferrari and Matra also used it. The pump body is a reasonable distance from the motor, so overheating, hence vapour locking, in the pump is, certainly on a F1 car, an installation issue rather than anything due to the pump itself.
I learned this the hard way.During a race the fuel in a F1 car gets steadily warmer as it circulates since the fuel pump is a gear type there is a pressure relief valve and un-used fuel is returned to the tank. On the Cossie engine it is routed back via a drilling along the intake tract to cool it a bit, but nevertheless it gets warmer as the level drops and time goes on. At Williams we had a collector system in the tank using baffles and one way valves which kept the fuel around the pickup, it picked up to about a teacup full in a 42/52.5 Imperial/US gallon tank. The normal installation when I started in the 1970s was a standard Lucas pump mounted on the end of one of the cams, and a complete electric pump and bypass valve just to get the pressure to start the engine and run at idle. (Anybody who was a fan in those days may remember the "pump" sign on the pitboard at the end of the first lap, which was a reminder to the driver to switch off this no longer needed electric pump). For 1981 Cossie did a pump update which basically used the Lucas motor cable driving the actual engine pump via a sprag clutch, such that the weight of one pump was saved. In the old days, without much cash or testing time we never ran full race distance tests. Whether it was the new pump system, the tank breather (I used not to use one and the pressure build up in the tank helped prime the pump) which became mandatory, or just that things were hotter in the engine bay, but we did not find that we had a problem, or what it was until we had had two catastrophes. In 1981 Alan Jones was in the lead at Monaco when we got a misfire, he managed to get back to the pits for a "splash and dash" (re-fueling was not part of the plan in those days, though not banned so it was a churn of fuel in, no special rig) luckily he had a huge lead and came out and finished second. We did not know what the problem was and had no resource to find it (a data logger was the size of a suitcase in those days and we could not afford one anyway). This was 3 points of the World Championship lost. At the race in Hockenheim it was worse. The circuit was long then with super straights, this time he did not get back, and he had a huge lead, 9 points lost. Without this Jones would have been World Champion again in '81.
This story could go on, but it is sufficiently OT already.AFAIK Bosch had nothing to compete with it at this time, if they had a better one we would have been racing it.
On topic, the Motor Sport pros were no longer using Rolleiflexes by the mis-1970s, even for pit pictures.
Frank D. On 29 Oct, 2009, at 18:36, Austin Franklin wrote:
"The Lucas electric fuel pump used in the system is notorious foroverheating and has been known to vapor lock in warm weather. The standard solution is to replace the Lucas pump with a more reliable Bosch unit, whichgets mounted in the left rear wheel well."
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