Would Highboy headers work?

Recommend 2 days, spend the first day walking and deciding what you really want to look at then come back the next day to visit those places.

So been driving this around this summer, runs quite well. Good power smooth as silk, cold blooded tho. Anyway had a sneaking suspicion on fuel supply. And just to confirm teed a good OTC vacuum/pressure gauge inline right before the carb set the gauge under the windshield wiper and went for a drive. 4-5psi is all it makes. Holds fairly steady unless really leaning into it then pressure falls off. It tries to fight back up but it can't hold it.

  So first this pump was built with the wrong pressure setting? And even if it was couple psi higher I don't think it would make up for the loss of psi or flow rate.

Maybe I should start with up sizing the pump to carb line but that wont change the pressure. So new pump and larger line? I'm disappointed this pump isn't working as it has the filter built in.

Air fuel gauge never showed lean, but it acted lean. Depending on fuel usually .8 to .9 lambda at WOT.

Standard center distance of 5.044 The last Cloyes I used was advertised as 0.005 in Reduced Center Distance. 

Anybody every use one on purpose? I never have. But I'm thinking it might solve my drivability issue. Engine is generally cold blooded for whatever reason or another and I like to hop in this thing and go, its sluggish almost being held back at low throttle try to give it some more and a backfire through the carb. Only when cold, when warmed up absolutely no issues. Vac advance is bringing in to much timing when cold so thinking adding one of those thermal switches might be the trick?

The reasons posted above is why I stick with a duraspark distributor. I don't see any advantages besides changing the curve by using an aftermarket distributor.

Driving home yesterday pressed on the pedal and a sudden tick tick tick miss etc, Found loose rocker arm on #4 exhaust. crap. Pulled the intake and offending lifter and found the plunger stuck down. Clip still in place but retaining ring was cracked, I assume it was collateral from the pushrod beating around. Everything else looks fine. Happened at maybe 2000 rpm and I limped it home about a mile.

Removed the plunger from the shell expecting to find debri or broken spring but all looked fine. Unable to disassemble the plunger assembly. Ill try again tonight but it was late last night.

Ideas why? This cam and lifters had little run time then sat on a shelf for about 5yrs, about 600 miles of cruising and beating the living snot out of it in the current engine over last few months. I should mention this is a flat tappet and I do not know what brand of lifters they where provided by Oregon cams.

Can I pull the guts from a new lifter and put them in the original shell? After doing some measuring and comparison of course. Or just throw a new lifter in and pray it breaks in. 

I believe this to be the Mopar filter, cloth or dacron material.

Suspicions confirmed, dropped the pan and found the filter was almost pulled into the supply tube to the point it was about to tear away. Forgot to take a picture but it was bad. As mentioned previously went with a 4x4 style filter and a custom stand pipe. The pan has large ribs on the inside so the stand pipe was left flat on the bottom and rests right on one of them. Test drive late last night, no more whine. Why would they use this filter setup if it doesn't work? how many transmissions have been burned up because of this?!