Earlier this year, I decided to tow my 1961 Corvair truck with My 1967 Chevy C10 to a shop in Palomas Mexico for rust repair. (What could possible go wrong. Two eighty year old guys driving a 55 year old truck towing a 61 year old truck into Mexico.)
The 67 has the original 283 with a Rochester 2 barrel and was running fine. In preparation for the trip, I serviced the truck and did a visual check. Bad fuel pump. No need to test, was spritzing gas from the vent hole. Should be an easy fix. Headed down to my local Irish parts store, purchased and installed an off the shelf fuel pump.
Truck ran ok on the trip that was mostly open highway but had a tendency to die at traffic lights. Hard to restart, Black smoke, acting like it was flooded. Finally died near home and would only run after cleaning sooty plugs.
I suspected that the new pump was overloading the stock Rochester 2 barrel. Following sage advice from this site, I decided to test not guess and checked the fuel pump pressure. Gauge showed 10 psi. From my understanding, this was way too much, should be closer to 3-4 psi.
Got online and checked the specs for the fuel pump sold at the local Danger Zone parts store. 7 psi max. Still too much but a step in the right direction, perhaps it would do. Purchased pump. Looked like the same offshore unit as the other in a different box. Installed the pump and things were worse. Out came the gauge. Pegged the gauge at over 10psi.
Back went the other pump. Picked up a cheap chrome “dial in fuel pressure regulator”. Truck runs fine.
I am really annoyed at the solution of having a cheap chrome after market regulator in my previous stock looking engine compartment. It should not be necessary. Is this the best that can be done? From my limited experience, it appears that off the shelf pumps are out of spec. Am I missing something?
