Sounded more like a fuel rather than an Ing problem. Was going to say that you needed to pump the accel pump a few times to make sure the carb still had fuel. Not just once.
Atleast spary and blow out the passages in the airhorn[body]. That crap is probably in the sec bowl and the pumps too so may want to pull that bowl. May want to just do a re-build.

why not disconnect the main fuel line from the intake side of the pump & hook up a line to a 5 gallon gas can & let it run - then you'll of isolated the tank & lines out of the system.

If it still dies you'll know its in the carb, pump & filter.....

I cleaned up the primary side of the carb and buttoned her back up just to test. Holy chitterlins, she runs different!

- hot start is SO MUCH easier now - just fires right up
- same curb idle, when I drop it into gear idle drops to like 730-750 RPM...not the 690-710 I was seeing before
- RPMs don't drop as much when fans kick on

I ran it for 25 minutes or so this morning like this and not even a sign of cutting off from what I could see. I am thinking maybe it was getting partially fuel starved and when the motor was loaded with alternator draw and especially in gear, it began to starve a bit.

I am thinking maybe I had a dual issue here with the dirt carb/fuel filter being the primary issue and the low coil voltage makeing the problem worse. After the replacing the ballast and getting the coil voltage up, the issue was much better but still was there.

I wonder how much HP I lost on the dyno from a weak spark? I was only getting a consistant 10-15kV at the plugs before and didn't know it until now . Now I am sitting at 35kV+ with the ignition tune-up I have done while troubleshooting this issue.

Needless to say this issue will probably come back if I have crap in the tank. When I get this car back in a driveable state, I will take it to have the tank flushed I guess. I want to know where all this crap came from!?

I will also probabaly go through the carb better and clean the secondary side as well to make sure this doesn't happen again.

As far as fuel filters go, I have the billet aluminum in-line with the 40 micron SS mesh filter. Is this not a good idea to use? It keeps the big stuff out but obviously the silt is still getting through. I have 6AN female fittings on both sides so I really don't want to have to ditch those if possible....

Thanks for all your help and ideas guys!

You sound pumped . I was beginning to think this one would go unsolved! If the ballast was the only (electrical) part changed you might swap the old one back in for a 5 minute test just to pin things down even further & it'd be a piece of cake to do. I'd suggest a 10 micron high flow filter between the mech pump/carb & a 100 micron high flow filter ahead of the electric pump if an electric pump is being used. Definitely flush the tank/lines