I have a '96 Tacoma 3RZ 4x4 with 278,000 and the original fuel pump. I'm planning a trip 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Aug 2006. There's nothing wrong with my internal tank fuel pump, but I would like to mount an external frame mounted pump to ease future replacements. Can this be done? If the internal pump is left in the tank, and it fails, will an external pump still pull fuel through the internal failed pump? Are there any considerations I should make to such a modification? Will a standard 12v connection (that's only on when the ignition is on) be sufficient to the external pump? Or could the external pump be used as a backup if (when) the internal fuel pump fails?
THANKS for comments!

You're thinking about this too dayem hard. DRIVE IT UP.
If you're going up the Haul Road in Alaska, give me a holler to let me know you're in the area, so you can have a phone number and a friendly face in case you get into a jam, of which more than likely will have nothing to do with the truck, short of running out of spare tires.

For safety reasons you would not want to wire the pump where it's on (and would stay on) with the ignition switch..

The safety issue is, if you were to get in an accident and rupture the fuel line e.g. underhood, the pump would continue to run and pour gas on the hot engine, etc. and greatly increase the risk of a bad fire..

The power to the in-tank pump is set up to shut down in the event of an accident.. Various techniques are used to do this....