Fast forward a month. Life has been crazy after the wedding but I have even crazier news. The Blazer is going to be in the Four Wheel Campers booth at Overland Expo West!!! I emailed them inquiring about whether they would like to have a vintage camper in the show since I live in Flagstaff, told them the story about selling it, first date, wedding pics, getting it back, all of it and they loved it!
Now the problem is that the Blazer is in Phoenix and I need to get it to Flagstaff but it still has the same drivability issues as before that Ive never been able to figure out. So I spent the last few days researching quadrajets, how to tune them etc. Watched a bunch of vids and tore into the thing yesterday. Managed to purposely detune the carb and tune it back to running correctly. I was pretty proud of myself so I took it for a spin and the same thing happened. ?
Back to the drawing board(internet) I went and I came across this website CliffsHighPerformance.com for the first time. Apparently Cliff is the guy in the q-jet world. He's active on his own forum and is a wealth of information. So Im snooping around the "diagnose a quadrajet problem" forum and WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE!?! I finally find a guy whos Suburban is behaving the exact same way as my Blazer. Runs around town just fine, cant cruise on the highway for more than a few minutes without bogging down and eventually dying. He went way farther down the diagnosis road than I did and what solved his problem? A faulty mechanical fuel pump. In fact, it was one he had recently replaced. He seemed to have replaced literally every part in the trucks fuel system and one day decided to pull the fuel pump which fell apart in his hands even though it was a few weeks old.
Here is where my Blazer comes in. When I originally bought it 2 years ago it definitely had some recent work done which included a rebuilt carb and a new fuel pump. Naturally I assumed a new or nearly new fuel pump would be just fine. Since that guys symptoms were so identical to mine I said screw it and bought a new Delco fuel pump from Autozone for $20 and threw it on this morning and.....it works
IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Took no time at all to install the new pump, truck fired right up, ran a little rough so I adjusted the idle speed and voila. Drove all the way to Flagstaff this afternoon at 65mph with no issues whatsoever. I couldnt be happier. Well, it got 7.9mpg on the way here so theres a little room for improvement ha.
*speedo is not accurate