Something like a Facet is what I have in mind although I have no idea if they would be appropriate for marine use.
The larger variants certainly put out enough pressure (7 or 8 PSI +) to overcome the float valves in a weber 45DCOE so it is a must to drop the pressure to 3 PSI or so. Your carbs may vary, of course.
A Gunson "lo-gauge" is a handy tool for measuring fuel pressure (in addition to manifold vacuum). Might be worth investing in one and checking the fuel pressure at the carb using a T piece in the fuel line?
In addition, can you remove the fuel pumps and operate the arms manually while checking for leakage from the pump?
With the carb reservoirs full the pumps should be pumping into a closed valve so I would have thought a few strokes of the pump by hand would show signs of any leakage.
The other thing to consider is that a flooding carb would be causing the engine to idle very poorly and probably black smoke at the exhaust whereas a leak through the fuel pump probably wouldn't make any difference.
faccet seems about the best, used on a fair few american boats, will see if they do a marine app but i dont see it being any differant down there, its nice and toasty lol
Im not sure what psi i need to get at moment, and until i know if its the carb needs changing, i might change to a differant type carb at the same time, i think its a rochester? so then i can match new pumps to new carbs.
good idea about the lo-guage, that should help narrow it down a bit, what will fanimold vacuum tell me?
its interesting you say about lumpy idle, as that was the 1st sign of a problem everytime, (1st time i replaced the engines i barely made it across the river to fuel pumps after they were fitted pmsl) now i had carbs rebuilt to rule that out, i think i should bin them just to rule it out. there are other benifits to swapping to electronic pumps anyway.
i looked into having both engines swapped to efi... its not cheap!
thats the other problem, what ever i do to fix this engine, i have to buy two of and fit to the other engine to keep them balanced lol boats - hull in the water to throw money into!
thanks for your advice again