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

[86 K-10]

figured out i need to increase the size of the bypass line, that just leaves the original problem (the loss of fuel pressure) someone HELP!!!!

[Torrey72]

I had an all stock 1979 Cherokee Chief with a 402 in it. When I did a tune up on it for the first time. The engine didn’t run right? On that rig. The fuel filter is where the fuel tank return line starts. It is located next to the Carb and it is in the horizontal position. My problem was that I had the filter rotated so that the fuel return line was below the level of the Carb feed line. It is hard to explain without a Pic so I added a link to the fuel filter it uses. http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/moreinfo.php?pk=56154
On one end it has a single inlet port. On the other end it has two exit ports. The one in the right center is the carb feed line and the small one on the right top side is for the return. You have to mount this filter just like you see it in the picture. The fuel return has to be above the carb feed. Mounting it rotated where the return port is physically below the level of the carb feed causes issues. Hope I was some help.

[86 K-10]

unfortunately, the stock fuel system had already been ripped out so the m-pump and stock fuel filter are long gone. thanks very much for the suggestion though

[Bus Ted Knuckle]

I'd sure check that the gas tank vent is open and venting right.