Cummins PT pump problems

I had the PT pump on my big cam 3 rebuilt maybe a month or so ago.

The truck has only been run around my yard, not down the road yet.

Initially everything sounded great and ran like it should. Then it began to feel like the accelerator was sluggish and it was harder to start, like it was losing its prime and sucking air.

It's continued to get worse until now it's acting like full-blown sucking air. If you accelerate there is no acceleration. If you hold it to the floor for a little bit and take your foot off then the engine will soar on its own and come back down and wants to stall out or it will stall out. As it idles the engine just surges.

I gravity fed it with a fuel can from up high, with the same results. The fitting with o ring that connects into the filter housing is brand new. I also put a new fuel filter on. So at this point the way I see it, either the fuel filter housing is cracked or the pump is having a problem. I do not think the housing is cracked.

When I took out the old filter I dumped it out and dirt did come out of the filter. That's the picture I've enclosed. I did drain some fuel from the bottom of the tank and some crap did come out but it didn't really seem like that much. But there was dirt that came out of the filter. I put the engine into this truck, and I did not think there could be any problem with junk in the tanks, or to completely drain them before I started it.

I am going to take the pump back to them tomorrow. Before I run the engine again I'm going to completely drain the fuel tanks and figure out how I can flush them. But here is my question.

Could dirt have passed through the filter and gotten into the pump? How much dirt will that filter filter out?

That engine only ran maybe a couple of hours if that. Could dirt really have gotten past that filter in that short of time and caused this problem?

 

No fuel anywhere, the pump is dry.

Before the pump was rebuilt, the throttle shaft seal was leaking and you could see the leak.

 

I hear what you are saying, but how could it do that just running a couple of hours?

If that is all that it is that would be great.

 

Unfortunately I think I'm having a problem that is beyond that.

When I initially put the pump on it ran the way that it was supposed to. I ran it for maybe a few hours at 1700 RPM because I flushed the engine and radiator and heater cores a whole bunch of times.

It just got progressively worse until I have absolutely no throttle response and the engine surges at idle and wants to stall after you rev it. I have been running it around my yard but running it with high RPMs and shifting and I could feel it getting progressively worse and the throttle response declining.

I put a new filter on just to make sure the filter itself was not obstructed. I did fill the filter and I have shut-off valves at the tanks so I refill the lines to make sure everything is completely primed.

Same thing all over again.