85 5.0 with stock holley calif. carb
 

Been awhile since I posted. Now car won't start unless I prime the carb. It stalls when I try to drive it, and won't start again unless I prime it again. Replaced brass filter and mechanical fuel pump. Problem persists.

Car is all stock, manual trans. It sat for a couple of years before I got it.

Plugged fuel tank? Or fuel line?

Thinkin' I'll do an edelbrock.

Any thoughts?

85 5.0 with stock holley calif. carb
 

Rebuild the carb, ditch the brass filter and replace it with a nipple and get yourself a glass fuel filter, ebay has some nice ones for good prices. Carb rebuild kits are ~$30 or professional rebuild is usuAlly ~$200 in my experience. If you can follow instructions and arent scared to smell like gas for a couple days id say do it yourself.

Old gas nowadays will gum up all the small holes in a carb and make it run like crap.

You could be running waaay too lean, one thing you can check right now is to make sure your air/fuel screws are not out of adjustment, depending on the carb you will have 2 or 4 of them, good starting point is 1.5 turns out, so you screw them in til resistance is felt, then back out 1.5 turns, you need a vacuum gauge to fine tune it but it will run with that initial setting.

Stock 85 carb = rebuild it.

sounds like the fuel pump is drawing air......inspect all fuel lines for any pin holes, cracked rubber portions of the line or a possible bad fuel pump drawing air due to a bad diaphram in the pump

85 5.0 with stock holley calif. carb
 

Going off this, you can get a fuel pressure gauge and make sure you are getting ~6psi of fuel pressure after the pump.

Fuel pump should have a weep hole on it that will leak fuel if the diaphram js bad.

I put a new fuel pump on it and the carb is a California Holley. No external adjustments.

Will start from the fuel tank and work my way forward to the fuel pump checking for obstructions and air leaks.

kind of ironic. I got a totally smogless exhaust on it and can't adjust the fuel mixture.

85 5.0 with stock holley calif. carb
 

No adjustments on it? Good ol California. When i had a crack in my fuel line on my 67 it wouldnt run unless i poured gas down the carb, i attached a vacuum pump to the line going to the gas tank and was able to hear the air escaping the line from the crack. It has to be a pretty substantial crack/hole to keep it from running, a vacuum pump will pull more vacuum than the fuel pump so you have a better chance at seeing a puddle of fuel if you go that route.


Also, use compressed air to blow out the lines while you are working on it, good opportunity to get it all cleaned out.