[Alan Roehrich]

The check valve retains fuel pressure after the pump is turned off. For example, a stock or stock replacement pump will usually retain 90% or so pressure for several minutes. If your pump retained a significant amount of pressure last year, for a significant period of time, and this year it bleeds off a substantial amount of pressure fairly quickly, then something significant has changed. Since that change is accompanied by a performance/driveability problem, that is where you should look first.

I would think, and I may be wrong, that 45 psi is a little low. It would seem to me that you'd want to run closer to 55-60 psi if you can build that much pressure, and use a shorter duty cycle on the injector to maintain the A/F ratio the engine likes.