Thanks man. The bear was her friend's, I was picking her up at a neighbor's place and they hadn't seen the Jeep since I pushed it into the garage, so they came out to check it out and their daughter stuck the bear in the back.
Overall, we've just been enjoying the crap out of this thing. Until recently, I hadn't really done much more to it.
A couple weeks back, it started in with the cutting out issue again but only stumbled a little bit mostly, then it cut off completely on me. Coasted to a stop, tried it, and it fired up again. I got under the dash and tried to push the wiring connector back together again (that was my guess at what fixed it last time). That seemed to do it, but then I had to pull it out to pack another vehicle for a road trip.
When we were ready to go, wife and daughter and dog loaded and sitting in the car waiting to leave, I went to pull Mater in and it ALMOST started, but quit and then refused to do anything at all. I kept trying and got nothing. I had parked it on a decline in our yard, to get it out of the way and even though I'm not using the stock tank (using a more square aux tank where spare mounts), I thought the gas might have been low enough to uncover the pickup.
So I got my LJ, tow strap and two hitch pins and pulled it back onto the driveway. Still no start. Put in a 5 gal gas can, no start. I thought I might have flooded it out, so I pulled the fuel pump relay connector, still no start.
Remember, wife and daughter sitting in the driveway waiting to go to the inlaw's through all of this...
I checked the voltage to the HEI and it was showing ok, but I didn't trust it since I'd been having the other trouble that I was sure was electrical. So I grabbed some wire with a female spade on one end from my random leftover wire pile (everyone has one of those, right?) and hotwired the HEI to the battery so I knew it had juice. That time, it started, but it ran like absolute crap. I managed to get it into the garage, pulled the wire to the HEI to kill it, said some final choice words and left.
I thought about it most of the 10+ hour drive that day and realized that the voltage to the HEI should have been perfect when wired direct to the battery, but it was running horribly once it started. I also realized that I got it into the garage with the fuel pump relay pulled. Of all the attempts to start it, the only one where there was a longer period of time between starts was the last one, that made me think flooding and I resolved to get a fuel pressure regulator and gauge.
I did those yesterday and found that my electric pump was putting out a bunch more than the 5.5-6 psi that the Edelbrock wants. Reconnected everything and it fired right up. Went for a drive to get gas and no issues. Here's to hoping that this has it set for a while. Got to find somewhere to drive it today