Think i lost a lift pump

The truck wont start on its own, you can shut it off and immediatly try to restart it and it wont fire. You have to crack the lines to bleed out the air for it to start and it runs fine untill you shut it off again.
The truck also has a bad fuel leak around the filter housing but its been like that for a year of more and its hasnt affected anything else untill maybe now.
Im really not very familiar with these ve trucks. Will the injection pump pull enough fuel to run itself or is my fuel leak so bad its pulling air into the system?

If its the lift pump how hard is it to changeout.

We have 5 of them on our farm. First fix the leak around your filter. Then if that doesn't fix check your fuel lines from motor back to the tank and especially the plastic fittings on top of the tank. They are notorious for cracking and sucking air. If you don't think you fuel lines are the problem then get a new lift pump for it. Only takes about ten minutes to swap out if that. Our 90 and 91 have had the lift pumps go out and they will run with a bad lift pump but you can defnitly tell due to rough idling.

My truck would barely run and die and then I had to bleed the injectors everytine to get it running again. The steel line going from the lift pump to the injection pump was loose right at the inlet of the ve and sucking air. Sounds like the leak coming from the fuel filter may be your problem. Pull the fuel filter then loosen the stud and fuel heater off and there will be a big o ring in there between the fuel heater and head. These are known to get old and crack and leak. Put a new one in and put er back together along with a new fuel filter and see if that fixes it.

There is a prime lever on the stock lift pump. Pump it up and down a few times then try to start. If it is the stock lift pump, there is a weep hole on the back side or top. Cant remember exactly but if the lift pump is bad it will leak fuel all over the top and also into the crankcase. These lift pumps are very simple to change out but If you plan on doing any modifications to your truck I wouldn't recommend putting a stock one back on. They fail at the drop of a hat.