wagoneer fuel pressure nightmare

[86 K-10]

so i bought a f*&^ing wagoneer, got it half-way home and the engine started cutting in and out and i had to have it towed to the house...3 days later, i still havent figured it out.

i installed a pressure guage after the fuel pump and regulator the PO had installed. at first it would read around 8 psi, then after a little driving would drop to 0, all the fuel would be gone from the glass fuel filter, and it would die.

the first thing i did was replace the crappy little e-pump with a new 105gph pump and regulator with a bypass, blew out all the lines and added a new fuel filter after the regulator. no effect, so i insulated all the lines from heat. still nothing..i also pulled the sending unit from the tank and blew it out, there's currently no screen filter on the bottom of it.

all fuel line connections on both the inlet line and bypass line are new and tight so i dont know of any way they would be leaking.

today i ran a new 3/8 inlet line from the tank and now the regulator isnt regulating...it was around 15 psi when i first turned it on and the adjustment screw wasnt really doing anything. so, i put the old regulator on in front of the new one and it dropped the pressure but now it's fluctuating and it's flooding the carb to the point where i cant make it the 200 feet out of the nieghborhood to test drive it.

i'm out of ideas. if this is a carb related problem, i dont understand why. the carb is a new holley 600 btw. so,my only other guess is maybe something to do with the tank, but im not sure what. i'm ready to light a match to this thing