Intermittent stall problem

[crsgmc]

I am posting this, on the hope that others may learn from my experience. I have a 1996 K1500, manual transmission. About four months ago, I was in town and coming to a stop at a light. The truck almost died, but caught itself before it did. It did it several times before I returned home. I had just filled up the tank, so I figured that I may have water in my gas tank. I put a bottle of heet in the tank. The truck ran fine for over a month and figured that I had fixed the problem. I went to town and it started doing the same thing, but this time it was bad. I could hardly keep it running and it died several times. Once I got on I80 it seem to run fine and ran fine all the way home. I checked out a bunch of things but could not find anything wrong. I have rebuilt the truck and most of the engine parts are new, including a new GM crate engine. I drove the truck for over a month and a half (hundreds of miles) and it ran fine. After going to town, where it ran fine, it died on the exit ramp on I80. It died so fast I couldn't get it off the road. I pushed it on to the dirt. It was totally dead and would not even try to start. Had it towed to my house. The next day I went out and it started and ran fine. I went to my mail box about a mile away. Almost did not make it home, died but restarted several times. It finally died on my property, but could not make it into the garage. I tried to start it again and realized that the fuel pump was not priming. I tried every morning to start it to get it in the garage. On the third day it started and I made it into the garage. The tank was almost full, but I could never figure out how to get the gas out. That ball thing makes it really difficult if not impossible to drain the gas. After washing the top of the tank, I removed the fuel pump. I slid it to the driveway and lifted it up using the front loader on my tractor, to drain the tank. After replacing the fuel pump with a Delphi pump, you can barely hear the pump prime. My old one was really loud. I should have checked the fuel pressure, I have the tool to do that. Replacing the fuel pump was not an easy job. Rounded a nut after liquid wrench and heat would't work. Because it was so intermittent, I never even considered the fuel pump. I was wrong.