fuel pumps in earlier C900's - replace that yukky rubber pick up?

Hi everyone,

Since I pulled the fuel pump from the turbo car (83 non-APC 8V) and found that it's rubber pick-up had gone gooey (!), I've used the pump and dodgy pickup retrieved from my donor car. For those who haven't seen the pics:

Anyway what I want to know is whether there is any point replacing the decayed rubber pick-up with another one (new of course!), or if it's better to try and get a fully-plastic hard pickup which seems to have become standard later on.

I haven't been able to tell from parts books, etc. if there actually is a plastic pickup that's got no decayable rubber parts and suits the older type of pumps which don't have a pre-pump.

Failing that, is there any problem using a pump from an 85+ car which has a pre-pump to replace the older style of pump? Did the fuel tank design itself actually change when Saab went from pressurising the whole tank to just having a small chamber pressurised by the pre-pump?

Besides the issue of adding another device to break, would it really bring any benefit to change to a later style of pump assembly when replacing a pump unit in a pre-85 classic 900?

The cost of a new rubber pickup looks reasonable when checking the saabsite.com price list, but I'm not really keen to buy a new one if it's not going to last very long with modern fuel mixes and all their interesting additives...

Regards,

Craig.

PS. This is posted in the classicsaab.net forums at: