Probably a stupid carb question... but I don't know the answer.

[joeydurango]

My truck is in one piece again, so I took it for a test drive the other day. No problems, everything ran great! Fast forward to tonight, I convinced my wife to take a little cruise to the store with me. Of course, after we come out of the store, the truck fired right up, ran for 15 seconds, sputtered, and died. You should have seen the look on her face.

Anyway, I turned it over again but it acted like it was flooded, so I popped the hood, and flooded is an understatement. There was fuel pooling in the intake manifold bolt head areas, and most of the lower half of the carb was wet. Fuel line/fuel filter area was completely dry. Somehow or another the carb just puked up a bunch of gas and it seeped out between the air cleaner spacer and the top of the carb. I mopped it up with a rag, let it sit for a bit, and started it up and got back home. Checked it again after shutting it off and it was nice and dry - in other words, completely normal.

What happened here? I'm not super-experienced with carbed vehicles, but I've never seen that on the three that I've owned over the years. Does that happen sometimes normally? Makes me nervous, would hate to have it happen again on a hotter engine and start a fire. QJet 4-barrel on a 350. I've never seen any sign of fuel seepage on this carb before, it appears to function very well, until tonight. Thanks! Gonna go purchase a fire extinguisher now.