MVS Volvo Forums contributor j-dawg spent time to document the process of replacing the fuel pump with a Walbro in his 1999 Volvo V70 T-5, and here it is:
j-dawg »
The other week, my car was running like absolute garbage. This appeared to be the worsening of a condition that had begun as a few months of rough starts and cold idles, and some quality time with a borrowed tester revealed low fuel pressure at the rail. Time to replace the fuel pump!
I looked up the parts on the ‘tubes, and the original Volvo pump is mondo dollars. Maybe this is worthwhile, but I’ve got a lot of other money to spend on the car and the fuel pump isn’t hard to replace. So I cruised around, and eeuroparts, it turns out, sells a nice kit to install the Walbro 255lph, a pretty popular pump, in the 850s. The kit cost about $60, and the Walbro 255 is a pretty common USA-made pump, so I decided to put a Walbro in my Volvo.
For the most part I followed the instructions from our favorite video tutor Robert, which can be found here. I found a few differences between the pictured car and my 99, though. Between the changes for the newer cars and the Walbro pump, I thought I’d document a few differences.
First up: the electrical connectors on the 99 aren’t sorta tucked and zip-tied in. Instead, there’s a really nice panel with all the connectors clipped in, keeping things super neat. To access this panel, it’s necessary to pop the panel directly behind the seats, which would mean removing the jump seats in a car so equipped. Mine is not, so I had to pull up the carpeted panels on the sides of the cargo area (they just pull out, though the clips put up a fight) to access the screws for the fold-up cover, which I then slid back to remove. The panel appears as below:
The fuel pump connector is between the yellow and black connectors.
Upon removing the pump itself, we see another change from the older cars: rather than two spade connectors, the fuel pump has a single plastic electrical connector:
And on the other end of the cable, there is a ground wire that provides continuity from the pump to the pump bracket to the connector to the chassis of the car. It can be seen in this photo, looped through the pump cap:
The pump that came out when I took the cartridge out of the bracket:
No metal spring, as in the earlier cars.The sock underneath popped off with some encouragement from a screwdriver. I pushed the tab out of the way and the pump slid out pretty easily.
The Walbro is not sized for this pump cartridge. The kit came with a closed-cell rubber foam tube that was supposed to be a sleeve to help the pump fit in the 850’s cartridge. I cut a square of this out to help the pump fit in the V70 unit instead. It slid in without too much force, but the pump is going nowhere. With the pump installed:
The Walbro kit was put together very thoughtfully. Of course it had the pump and the filter “sock” for the inlet, but it also had the rubber sleeve, a fuel hose, two new worm-drive clamps, and (this really warmed my heart) an adapter to connect the Volvo fuel pump plug to the spade connectors on the Walbro. I cut the fuel hose to length, which ended up being about the same as the old hose, and reassembled.
Reinstallation is the reverse, but I hit one surprising snag that turned out to be the hardest part of the job: screwing the cap back onto the fuel tank, it seemed that it just would not go on straight, becoming cocked and frustrating me for like fifteen minutes. Finally, reasoning that the cap was flexible and would bend before it stripped the threads, I just grabbed my oil filter pliers and started turning. Sure enough, I heard a thud and the threads snapped into place, letting me screw the cap down securely.
The Walbro was surprisingly loud, a virtue for which it is apparently famous: turn the key and hear a little whir before hitting pressure. But a few cycles of the key later I had full pressure at the rail. Still have some reassembly of other bits to do before I start the car, but I’m happy with the result, and the price was great. All told, a pretty easy job at a relatively low cost, and I was really happy with the kit that let me do a drop-in replacement without having to use my brain.
Walbro kit Fuel Pump Replacement
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Last Updated on June 2, 2025
