Dropped my tank recently for fuel pump. It wasn't a nightmare, but wouldn't want to do it on the trail. Bottom line, I'm trying to think of a way to improve the bulletproof nature of the rig, and make it easier to address a fuel pump issue that happens at an inopportune time.

(1) Anybody thought about moving the fuel pump out of the tank? Seems like it could easily be relocated aft of the fuel filter. Is there a good reason for the fuel pump to be in the tank? I thought there was an argument that the pump is cooled by being submerged in the gas, but after dropping tank and rebuilding fuel assembly it's clear the pump isn't actually submerged all the time.

(2) With the hardlines on our 3rd gen fuel assemblies, could a hatch actually work?

(3) What about modifying the assembly to make new junctions and isolate the hard lines, so that the assembly COULD be pulled up through a hatch (like on the 4th gen)?

I remember someone trying to create an access door under the rear driver side passenger seat..

Did you trim the vent pipe while you had the pump out?

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Yeah, I see posts and vids about HATCHES, but they have comments like "nice, but the hardlines make it so you can't actually get the assembly out". I haven't seen one where they come back and say "no problem, it came out fine", haha.

I looked into the VENT PIPE, but then couldn't find a clear answer and went ahead and put mine back together as is. It's supposed to let you fill more before nozzle shut-off, right? My concern was not being sure they aren't already shortened on the 99's, and that if you go too short you have EVAP issues. The vent pipe on my existing assembly was already shorter than the one on the "replacement" that I was replacing.

OK, since I brought it up, here's what happened to me. It's a cautionary tale. Read at your own risk:

I shipped the '99 from Vegas area, because it was rust-free, with 5-speed and e-locker...three awesome things that my '98 lacks. But first drive in it I ran out of gas, because I hadn't learned about the fuel gauge issue yet. Took it to my guy who was planning to look the whole thing over hard for me anyway, and he said it's the sending unit and to just do the whole pump assembly, which I let him do since he owed me a little time for helping him out on something else. We got the aftermarket fuel assembly because it was so much cheaper than OEM, and was available. And that was the big mistake.

Fast forward 6 months, I was still dealing with gauge issues and started having intermittent fuel pump symptoms, but was looking at everything else because it couldn't be the fuel pump already, right? Wrong. I finally isolated it to the pump and dropped the tank, and found not only were the hardlines on the new assembly already pitted and corroding, but the fuel pump connector was wired poorly and had been burning itself up inside my fuel tank!

So, since I had kept the old assembly, I looked at rebuilding it with new components, but the old pump tested good for proper resistance and function, and the old sending unit tested good for proper output voltages, and so...I just put the whole original assembly back in. Truck has been running fine, though I don't really know how old my pump is and kind of wish I had actually replaced it, which has me thinking about the options in my OP.

What's weird is that my gauge issues resolved in the swap back to the OG assembly. I had checked my VIN against the TB and found I would need to do the board fix, so can now only assume that something in my sending unit circuit just wasn't seated right (likely a ground), and either (1) mine was never actually bad, or (2) somebody had actually already done the board fix.

Anyway, stick with OEM parts folks. I usually do, but had a moment of weakness.

This seems like wasted effort if you already replaced your fuel pump, unless you went with a crappy fuel pump. If you went OEM or Denso on the fuel pump then you should be good for at least another 100k miles unless you are running the tank empty before each fill up.

EDIT: Didn't see your above post until I posted.