I am swapping a 383 into an 88 sport coupe and I think I got everything down except for the fuel system. I am sticking with the pump thats in the tank for now. Will it feed 400hp? How do I rewire it to work without the ECM?

 

feul injection or carb?

 

carb (i should have posted that the first time)

 

i changed my friends car over this fall i got a mallory return style regulator for it and wired the feul pump to come on whenever the key was ahead.you need to get a feul pressure gauge and set the pressure around 7psi or so.

 

where are the wires for the fuel pump located?

 

we run all new wires from way back by the sending unit

 

7 psi is excessive for a carb. 4-6 is all that's needed. All the pump needs to do is keep the fuel bowls full, unlike EFI which requires pressure to inject properly. The pressure simply insures there is adequate supply under load.

 

corrected once again

 

You should wire the pump in series with an oil pressure switch. The factory used a timed relay that allowed the pump to come on when the ignition was turned on, but the relay would kick off after 5 or 10 seconds. It was assumed that the oil pressure would be up by then and a parallel power path would be established to keep the pump running.

You could hook up a momentary switch to provide the function the relay provides in the factory setup. That would insure the fuel bowl was being filled before you begin cranking on the starter.

 

You would probably also want to use a 74-79 Coil-in-cap HEI with mechanical and vacuum advance.. That would take care of the "without the ECM" part...