losing fuel pressure

[HofDesigns]

I bought my first spider (an 83) a few months ago and am trying to get it back on the road. A friend of mine with a hoist agreed to trade some some work so he's fixing the fuel system for me. he has a new pump installed that seems to lose pressure as he drives ( hasn't made it out of the driveway.) it will idle fine. He thinks it is electrical, possibly a bad ground somewhere. before I start chasing wires, I wanted to find out if this is a common problem. Has anyone encountered this?

[124JOE]

try the pick up screen
and the fuel filter

[Sunracer]

the fuel pump ground it to one of the left rear taillight mounting studs

[HofDesigns]

thanks. we'll try it this weekend.

[rlux4]

I'm interested to see if the ground is your problem. Another thing to check would be to see just how much pressure you're getting at the fuel rail. You can check this by pulling the line going to the cold start injector and putting a liquid pressure gauge on it. Did the filter get changed?
Ron

[seabeelt]

How do you know its fuel pressure and not something else?

[HofDesigns]

Well, a month later we've figured it out. the replacement fuel pump was defective. Simple as that. we chased down every possible electrical issue and just as we were tearing our hair out, we got another fuel pump just to be sure. radically different results. The little car runs like a champ (with a little oil leak of course).

That was the good news. the bad news is that fourth gear is completely gone. A risk I took when I bought a non-running car, I know. Maybe I'll send it to Midwest fiat this winter for a rebuild/repair.