Check the fuel filter as well..

Turboluke what's the soot a sign of?

the soot is a sign of the engine running rich Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

As well as the fuel pump inspect all the ignition leads, the distributor (power pack) and the coil.

well, i guess i can speak from experience here basically, if your intank pump is fubarred, ie lower than normal pressure, then replacing the main pump is useless, because the fuel flows through the intank pump -> to the -> main pump So i would basically put money on saying that the intank one is stuffed - let us know how the replacement goes (because i had the exact same problem and mine is now running sweet)

Red88VL: I will change the internal pump this weekend if I can and then let you know and everyone else if it fixes it. I'm sure that some other people have had these problems with there VL's too.

I have the exact same problem. Started my car up on sunday and only went about 50 metres and the car wouldnt go over 40km/h, it would just cut out and once the revs dropped, it would come back into life again. I drove the car around the back streets and it just kept on doing it so i stopped and put it into neutral and gave it a bit of a rev and then BANG! She gave off a nice bang with plenty of black smoke. So i took it home and didnt touch it and go the RAA to come out. The guy thought it was the leads as he could hear a cross fire happening and i could hear it too. He couldnt work out exactly what the problem was so he just put it down to electrical breakdown. So i went off and bought some new leads and it kinda of fixed the prob. I could now go over 40km/h but it shuddered like hell and acceleration was poor and idleing was terrible. And then just yesterday, i heard the fuel pump making a weird noise so im thinking that is whats gone. Anyway, i am gonna replace this and see what happens. Sorry about my rambles...

What is a good way of testing the IN-TANK fuel pump to see if its stuffed??? Same goes with external pump....??

it has been mentioned before that the in tank fuel pump will often gurgle and still be fine. both my previous vl's (n/a and turbo) had gurgly fuel pumps with no problem. they will generally only gurgle when the tank is close to empty coz the sound isnt muffled by the petrol. this is my experience and a few other people have mentioned it previously. not to say thats not your problem but the gurgling isnt necessarily a sign of a shoddy fuel pump.

If you want to test your pumps, get a mate to sit in the drivers seat and you go put your ear next to the fuel tank. First disconnect the ground wire from the main fuel pump and get your mate to turn the car on reds, you should hear the in tank pump whirring for a few seconds. If you dont.. it is shagged. Then plug in the wire, get your mate to turn it on reds again and you should hear the much louder external pump whirr. Whirring and slurping is normal.