Ok, I let my father borrow the t/a (bad idea) and the high volume fuel pump I had went. So that was replaced, but before it went and when it worked fine, it ran 8lbs of pressure on my guage at idle. Now its got a stock replacement one on there, and the gauge fluctuates wildly when its running at idle. This, apparantly is irrelevant to anything (so my father says), except my car dies out at high revs randomly and will sometimes die out after revving high and shifting. Is it probably the new fuel pump. A normal one should be able to feed my motor well Im guessing.

On other notes, this happened after I pulled a head and swapped intakes, and added a 1" carb spacer. The car backfires occasionally if I slam the gas down, and my father thinks something with the floats in the carb is to blame. I point fingers at the fuel pump due to fluctuating fuel pressure. The backfiring occured before the spacer, but the dying out is new, but was most likely coincidence with the fuel pump dying (the original one, which replaced the other one which broke before that, Im on my third fuel pump in 500 miles, the first ruptured a diagphram and spewed oil all over). SOmetimes it feels like the motor dies out a little but not fully after shifting, others it feels like the motor seized up, I let off the gas and it takes off again. Oh well, now that Ive confused everyone, I think its time to get off the computer, have a cookie, go to sleep and just go fishing tommorow and swear at the car later

 

Well I don't know whats with the jumpy fuel pressure. If you have an electric pump it should hold the pressure steady at idle. But as far as the backfiring through the carb and lacking on the top end could be because your timing is a little off. Backfiring through the carb is a possible sign of wrong timing. I don't know if you have hooked a timing light up but that may be an idea to figure out where you are. Also very much backfiring through the carb like that can damage it. It can waste a power valve by doing that.

 

I am not too carb literate but I think the carb is not set up right.

You probably have the standard Summit fuel pressure gauge, which is why it looks jumpy on idle -- it's just a sh!tty gauge, the mechanical fuel pump is fine. I've seen the 'jumpy' behavior before, and everything was fine with fuel pressure.

Make sure you have a return line connected to the fuel pump, other than that it has to be the carb, you have to adjust it...