I plan on making a custom return fuel system and was curious if a dampener was necassary. I don't think CJ or AAM use one, somebody help me out on this.

 

our kit does not use the fuel dampeners. we have yet to find a need for them... i am sure they are there for a reason in the factory setup... the question is exactly why are they and does their function apply to a full return system? if we ever ran into some evidence that they would be of benefit, we may find a way to retain them... but not likely since we have not run into any problems thus far, and never needed them on any other vehicles we built.

 

What's a fuel dampener?

 

I was reading about the dampeners. It seems they are there to reduce the hydraulic vibrations from the injectors opening and closing. It said this can create variations in the pressure.

 

With an OEM "returnless" system, injector pulsing can readily lead to psi fluctuations in the OEM fuel rails . Look at it this way the long feed line "post" tank regulator is analogous to a high series resistance. The dampeners act like smoothing capacitors (note the RC relationship).

Now with a "full return" system, series "resistance", post regulator, is far lower and less sensitive to load variance (ie injector pulses). Hence lumped mode dampeners are much less necessary.

I just draw these conclusions from my EE experience.