1973 AMC Hornet Sportabout X

Red20 wrote: Can’t figure out what I was thinking.

Early onset CRS?

It’s almost 9 and I have a LOT to get done before 3 this afternoon when I have to clean up and take my son to baseball practice. Then it’s back to work tomorrow. The pressure is on this get this car running today/tonight.

According to USPS tracking, my starter should arrive sometime today. As long as that doesn’t take hours to squeeze in with the header, I should be able to have everything else done and be firing it up by tomorrow morning.

So after working furiously, nonstop for two days without sleeping only to find my fuel pump is putting out way too much fuel, I drive all over SoCal and finally make a few calls and find a store with a Holley fuel pressure regulator in stock. I get home, minutes from victory, fuel gushes out of the top of the regulator. Turns out, most likely some yahoo didn’t want to spend a couple dollars on a rebuild kit, so he bought a regulator, removed the springs, diaphragm, and gasket, and put it back together then returned it gutted. I managed to get up the energy to drive out late last night for another one at another store far away, but I just couldn’t keep working after not sleeping and working straight through the previous night.

But now I’ve had a good 7ish hours of sleep, and I’m ready to finish. I’m just gonna take a deep breath and start over. I’ll pull the distributor and find TDC and static set timing, check everything again. Ready my vacuum gauge, timing light, remote starter switch, couple of screwdrivers and wrenches, and hopefully make short work of dialing this puppy in.

Another step forward. Looking good.

Which mechanical fuel pump are you using? Stock pumps only put out 5 psi and Carter hi-po is about 7 or 8 psi. Are you sure the gauge is accurate? 6 psi at wide open throttle is sufficient. Where is the gauge mounted?  Can you run it out to the cowl just so you can see the fuel pressure under load?