Car kept dying after long drive

[Soft Taco 84]

Normally I just drive my Falcon around town and haven’t had any issues with it running but recently I took it out to visit my grandparents about 40 miles away from me. It was fine on the way there but I started to head back about 4 hours later and 10-15 miles into the trip home my car started sputtering out and shut off. Kinda like if I ran out of fuel. It started up after a couple minutes and it made another couple miles before it happened again. After another time happening it just wouldn’t start again. Had it towed back home and it started up and ran just long enough to put it in my garage. The fuel pump and filter are new. It had plenty of fuel. A couple weeks before this happened I had smelled fuel after driving and found that it was leaking from the sending unit seal and I was in the process of driving it often for the purpose of using up all the fuel so I could change it without needing to drain the tank. After it broke down I ended up just emptying the rest and replacing the sending unit and seal. Could the old sending unit have caused my issue? It runs fine now but I haven’t driven it outside of my neighborhood because I don’t want it to break down again. Thanks for any help, guys.

[beerbelly]

I always attack problems with the cheapest solution first. It sounds like a fuel filter issue to me, but you say that you have a new fuel filter. Did you take a look at the 'sock' filter on your fuel sender? I've heard that the new fuels can gum up the plastics of the original socks, which could cut off flow.

[Soft Taco 84]

The sock on the old sending unit was really dark in color. The whole unit looked really old. Who knows how long it’s been there. Hard to tell if it was clogged by looking at it but I’m hoping that’s what the problem was.

[Luva65wagon]

Did you use the same hose connection at the tank? That hose rarely gets replaced after even 60 years. So it could have had a suction leak (may not have leaked fuel out, only let air suck in) and that would stall you.

Also if you are running ethanol fuels this stuff is horrific on just about all carbureted cars. I had a issue a couple months ago where my carburetor was full of jel-like stuff. Had to do a rebuild on a 1 year old carburetor. It doesn't seem to happen as bad if you are driving it all the time, but all my carbureted vehicles get very infrequent use and that's when things start to corrode and gel up.