Hot Fuel Pump Relay

[Andrew Finney <afinney@tamsconsultants.com>]

It happened on my old '82 coupe, only a matter of time before
it happened on my '83 UrQ. Fuel pump shut-off at highway
speeds due to overheating fuel pump relay. On the coupe it
took $200 for the mechanic to locate the problem. This time I
was prepared. I used my fingers as a heat-sink and managed
to make it 300mi without shut-off. I also swapped in the power
windows relay but that also got hot. I noticed that the power
windows relay was hot to start with, but not as hot. Is this just
symptomatic of old tired dirty relays?

Question: Is this caused by a bad fuel pump or poor
connections in the relay? With the coupe, the mechanic
replaced the fuel pump relay with the later style with the fuse
and I never had another problem. With the UrQ it probably
costs a lot more to fix.  I'm going to wire the fuel pump with a
separate relay under the back seat to feed the pump directly
from the battery, with the existing pump power feed used as
the relay trigger. Am I inviting disaster with this? Anyone out
there have any thoughts.
Thanks.

Andrew Finney
1983 UrQ.