03 Dodge Neon SXT/What is the current draw supposed to be for the fuel pump?

Wondering what the current draw should be for the fuel pump. The cheap meter I used show a draw of 3 amps. I've read that about 1 amp/10 psi is a good rule of thumb. If all of this info is accurate I guess this would be my lean condition while driving. Can't get a good reading with a fuel pressure guage so I am relying on current draw.

3 amps seems a little low to me, but you really need to find a way to get a good fuel pressure reading before you start component testing. In a real -life diag situation for a fuel concern, I am always going to check fuel pressure and upstream O2 response to RPM increase before I look at pump amperage with my scope. Remember that the pump amperage could be affected by multiple things. I would try to keep it simple and check the basics first to see if you even have a fuel supply issue in the first place.

You always want to determine which system you are going after using symptom intuition, faults, and basic testing, then you start jumping into component testing starting with the most likely culprits that are easiest to access.

Good luck and hope this helps,

Thank you for the reply. The situation is the car has decent trims at idle and snap throttle, but while driving the car reads open loop more than I think it should and the fuel trims are maxed most of the time while driving and in closed loop. I put a pressure guage on it and it would read around 30 psi, then loosen up the fitting a little at the rail and the pressure would read almost dead on 53 psi. Paid a shop to diagnose it and they said fuel pump needs changed because they were only getting 30 psi, so I took it home and retested and it would read 30 psi until I loosened the fitting then back up to about 53 psi again. So is it the guage, the rail?? I was loaning a cheap oem guage and I know oem tools are junk in my experience. Now, a year later I loaned the guage again and the needle on the guage will very slowly climb up to 49-50 psi. The seals in the guage are deteriorated and the car never has a problem starting right away so the slow pressure climb I don't believe is accurate. The guage is junk. I've used at least 1, maybe 2 other brand gauges that were brand new as well. I never got proof of what the psi should be last year I was seeing that 53psi is a normal number, now I am seeing that it should be 58psi. This is why I am not relying on a guage for this case. I need to know current draw to know for sure since the gauges may be lying. Once I verify what current draw should be, if mine is too low I will check for voltage drop and if it's within specs I will probably switch the pump. For a year I've assumed it isn't really the pump and maybe a lazy o2 but when I pull a vac hose as soon as I spray a touch of cleaner down the car dies so I know response is good. Changed the map sensor because I was wrong about what I thought should be. No other codes except for p0171 which takes a little while to come on and usually shows it happening near idle even though my trims are normal at idle. Sometimes after going for a test drive and returning to idle the upstream will read around .055v, so the other day I turned the car off then right back on and the sensor started swinging again instantly. Not sure what is going on. I am relying on that current draw spec for the pump. The garage that diagnosed it specializes in automotive electrical but all I was told is they put a guage on it.

You mentioned you were using a cheap meter to take the amperage reading, which sounds like you don't have much faith in that piece of equipment either. You gotta use known good equipment to do your testing. I know the stuff can be expensive, but it also gets expensive to shotgun parts on a car that don't fix it. You're going to wind up getting really frustrated trying to make sense of readings that you aren't sure you can trust.

I usually see pump amperage between 4.5 and 6 amps on most vehicles, but if it i was a tad above or below I wouldn't worry too much. It also varies by vehicle and design.

If you do have 53 psi under load and the spec is 58, that's not going to make your trims max out. But once again it goes back to "can I trust anything this equipment tells me?" If you snap the throttle, look at your Pre-cat O2, does the voltage go high or low? If it's getting fuel starved, you would expect the voltage to drop low under load.

One thing that would concern me a little is when you mentioned your O2 voltage stopped switching until you did a key cycle. I would want to get to the bottom of that first, if it was me.

Good luck!

About pump current, a partially shorted pump can read high current and low pressure. Or, resistance in the pump can read low pressure and low current.

I had a pump drawing 13 amps on an F150 with fuel dribbling out of the line. I've had kinked lines causing ok pressure but low flow. I even had a pump with low current and zero pressure because the car was out of gas.

If I recall correctly, some cars will have lower pressure while idling but higher pressure while driving at RPM.