Haven't been driving the Dodge 64 Convertible enough.

think there might have been some water near the wiring and had lights but no click or ignition; dried out, and it might have been the ballast / resistor thingy......say that like i know what i'm talking about but i don't

anyhow, now there's a starving issue developing and a power down when I'm driving....and I"m guessing that I had one backfire (never, ever had that before)....but the guess is water or dirt in the fuel. Anyhow, going to attempt a fuel filter change, but any suggestions for a totally rookie on testing the fuel pump?

Just pull the fuel line off the fuel pump side of the fuel filter. Then have someone turn the ignition over a couple times and see if a good stream of gas comes out of the line.

It's common in automatics that sit awhile for the neutral start switch in the trans (1968?-up) to be balky; just try starting in N rather than P. I swapped switches, but I still find that after it sits a few months it'll crank in N but not P, but after starting once that it works fine in both.

So, it's been running better but then yesterday it started that random sputtering event. Seems to be worse in low rpm and in uphill grades, but I changed the fuel filter.

I"m pretty much wanting to avoid changing the fuel pump due to cost, especially if it turns out that the carburetor is being weird or the fuel is demented.

Lots of things could cause that. Most of the time I've found that it was a bad coil or coil-to-dist HV cable that caused problems that would come and go. Both are difficult to test very well.