Alright, my modes are in the sig. Here's the problem:

I just put in an electric fuel pressure gauge, just to make sure my carb was getting enough pressure cause it's running kinda funny. The gauge wouldn't give me a reading, and after much sweat and lots of hours I finally just bought a 10 dollar mechanical gauge to hook up under the hood. When I fired it up, it started going crazy.
If I was holding the rpms steady, the gauge would bounce from 0 to 5-10 lbs, back and forth really quick. The only time it would hold steady was when the car was sweeping up through the rpms on a pretty heavy if not full acceleration. I could actually see the top of my fuel filter pulsing with the gauge.

Any thoughts? If I got a fuel pressure regulator, it would only even out the highs, not the lows, right? Doesn't a carb want around 5.5 pounds of pressure?

 

Might help if you said what pump you were using Judging from the way it behaves I'd guess it was some aftermarket street/strip mechanical. Probably designed to use a regulator so go ahead and add one.

and yeah..10psi peaks on an edelbrock will cause some funky problems
Cut it down to about 5 with the reg.

 

Well, to be honest... I'm not entirely sure which pump it is. I think it's just a stock pump off of a 350, but I can't be much more help then that. Unfortunately, when I had my engine rebuilt, I didn't know much about cars, and the shop I had drop it in for me didn't really know squat about performance cars i.e. I just found out that although they replaced the distributer, I still have the stock coil. Stuff like that.
So in all honesty, the pump could be stock off my original 305, or it could be the stock one off of the 350 that I had rebuilt to the 383.

Man, I wish I knew then what I know now(not that I know that much). I could have saved a ton of heartache, and a TON of cash.

 

heheh if that isn't always the way it goes. Well..now you know...or are at least starting to.

No stock mechanical pump is gonna spike at 10psi...well....at least not unless something is damaged in the relief valve(s). Try sticking a reg on it.

 

So if something was wrong with the relief valve, would a fuel pump swap fix it? And how hard is it to switch fuel pumps? Finally, does it matter which regulator I get?