Road Trip Performance Issues

[Zilverado]

So just got back from vacation which included a short road trip to Minneapolis – we left the Twin Cities the morning of the day the 35W collapsed – very creepy feeling indeed. Hope all Minnesota board members and their families are OK.

The trip, with the truck, resulted in some questions…

To start with, about an hour before leaving home and heading to the campground for the first night, I noticed a huge fuel leak. My fuel pump was leaking bad – not with the truck running, only while resting. So I picked up a new pump ($30) on the way out of town and replaced it the next morning at the campground. Gotta love these older trucks…

A couple of days later we left to head to the Twin Cities for a couple of days – an 8 hr drive from Southern Manitoba. Just the truck, no trailer. Heading south down I29, into a fairly stiff head wind, the truck had serious trouble maintaining the 75mph speed. It would start to hesitate (jerk) as if it was being starved of fuel. Driving in OD was not even an option, as the truck again could not maintain those speeds. We had to slow down and maintain around 65 to 70mph in order to keep everything smooth. Once we turned south-east down I94 from Fargo to Minneapolis, things were a lot better. 70mph was doable – even in OD.

All was well on the return trip as well, until the day we actually left the campground and headed back home again, pulling the trailer (a small pop-up tent trailer). Into another strong headwind, the truck again had similar hesitation issues even maintaining 60mph.

So, having never experienced this before, my question is - - was this a fuel delivery issue, or is the 305 just under-powered? If it is fuel delivery, could the new fuel pump be an issue or is it a carb/float thing? I know a 350 (or bigger) would likely not have these problems, but like I say, this is new for the 305 as well.

I know I’ve read where guys have installed after-market inline electric fuel pumps. Is this a possible solution?

Any thoughts?