The cable driven, in-tank pumps that Waterman built solved the problem of having the pump and some fuel system plumbing in the cockpit, was used in midgets, sprints and silver crown but there were big reliability issues with the cable drive so it fell out of favor pretty quickly.
There were also frame-mounted, cable driven pumps on some silver crown cars as well.
I seem to remember it was mandated by USAC for the ill-fated new generation crown cars.
As far as a shut off valve at the tank, carbureted stock cars use a check valve off the fuel cell that only opens when it sense a slight vacuum created by the fuel pump with the engine running. They were a brass body, -8 inline unit kinda looks like a bypass and cost about $50.
I would guess the All Stars will follow WoO's lead and require them next year, and I would image they will just up the minimum weight by the weight of the fire system. I would also anticipate that all the nozzles will be in the cockpit area, you would need all of the agent you can get in an open cockpit car and with only a 5 lb system you probably couldn't do the other locations effectively. Safecraft has an automatically activated system that starts at around $600 designed for sprint cars, it uses a 3M liquid agent (not dry chemical). There was a really cool video on their website showing the system in action.
|