Fuel pump push rods and frustration, long slow trips home...

["Kelly Pierce" <jkrestor300@xxxx>]

Greetings group!
About 5 years ago I had a 66 Coronet 440 2drht. with a 383 4 barrel. My brother in law owned it prior to my obtaining it and always had trouble getting it to start after sitting a day or more. He put in a new fuel pump,two different ones as he thought the first was defective, filter etc. No change. I get the car and put a new filter in the tank, No change. Then the car starts acting like it runs out of gas at full throttle acceleration, other than that, ran fine. The day I have the car in town and have a appointment to give a talk to a driver ed class it dies going up a small hill. No gas. Finally got it home by priming the carb, jumping in and keeping the throttle at half floored all the way home- it would run until it ran out of gas, coast until it got more from a coasting "dead" engine, 40 miles home, 19 on a very busy 2 lane.This about drove me insane trying to figure out why. A friend suggested I pull the push rod out and check it- the cam end was worn off to the point the rod only had enough travel left to just move the fuel pump lever a fraction of it's normal travel. New push rod, end of problem. I kept that rod as a reminder. I have gone into 5 big blocks for various reasons since and 2 had worn rods, not near as bad but would have been if not replaced, the engines with the worn rods came from fairly low mileage engines (as the one in the Coronet) and must have spent many days/weeks without being started over the life of the engine/car. May that be part of the problem? Lack of oil at that spot on start-up after sitting for long periods of time? Food for thought.... New ones are still available from your local dealer.
Joe Pierce 300J+Kx3+M+others

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]