I have a vacuum gage (with a drag pointer) located between my primary and secondary fuel filters. I noticed recently that the drag pointer is on the border between the red zone (change filter) and the green zone. Normal in the past was for it to be in the middle of the green.

I let my fuel tanks run down so that I only had 15-20 gallons left and rigged a pump so I could suck fuel though my primary filter into 5 gallon jugs. I ran it all through my 10 micron standard primary, then changed it for a 2 micron element -- poured all the filtered furl back in and filtered it again using the 2 micron element.

The vacuum pointer still runs into the border area between red and green zones. So I was thinking the pickup might be blocked. I connected an electric dinghy inflation air pump to the fuel hose and blew into the pickup for about 10 seconds -- then put it all back and again and the pointer is still reading high.

The engine still seems to run normal. So I'm wondering if I have a stubborn pickup block that requires removal/disassembly, or perhaps my gage has gone bad.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?