Fuel Starvation ?

[GeorgiaSnake]

Last night we all went to the local drag strip to air out our cars. I had a ball but feel like I could have run mid 12's if I didn't run out of fuel in 3rd gear.

The car hooked up and pulled like crazy through 1st and 2nd then right after hitting 3rd it just about stopped running, like it was out of gas. One of the guys told me it was spitting out black smoke off the line, really rich mixture, and thought I was sucking the float bowls dry. Any suggestions or opinions. The fuel would come back in a second or so and the car would haul ass again, spinning the rears in third gear at 90 mph.

Randy

[George Snyder]

Randy,
Assuming your carb is a Holley or similar design?
I think the first place i would start looking is the float levels. The second would be to remove the float bowls to make sure the floats are moving freely. I had a similar problem and discovered that when installing the braided fuel line a tiny piece of rubber got into the fuel bowl and was restricting the travel of the float.

If items 1 & 2 seem normal, my next guess would be the fuel pump or regular? Monitoring a fuel pressure gauge temperarely mounted at a location by a codriver can view is really hard? A fuel pump or regular that is suppling a steady 5-7 psi at idle may not at a substained higher flow rate.

If you do change the fuel pressure regular, may I suggest that if you do reguire a higher than normal fuel rate that you use a 4 port regulator (1 in & 3 out). The three exit ports can then be utilized in the following manor. 1 for gauge and then run seperate line to each fuel bowl directly from the regular. It should help assure that the both the primeries and secondaries are receiving the same amount of fuel. Some dual pumper fuel lines can be very restrictive with fuel delivery.
Fustrating I know and good luck.
Bud

[Excaliber]

Fuel Filter checked out OK?

Thats a classic fuel filter symptom.

Ernie