[Gregski]

David sounds like you are no stranger to turning wrenches in which case I have to stand my ground and say a hard no to an external fuel pump. Internal pumps use the gas to cool themselves and don't have to work as hard, as a pump is more of a push than a pull, they are better at pushing fluid than sucking it out of the tank.

As far as the motor mounts, I too have a '71 however it's the only truck out of three that I haven't done an LS Swap on, (have something even more radical in store for that one) however when it comes to the motor mounts check to see if your stock clam shells are the truck type or the car type, no reason for them to be the car type but it being 50 years old who knows. The car type on the left in the pic below have a raised pattern on them (bad, won't mount flush) the truck ones are indented (good) will mount flush with the LS plates, some folks grind the car shells flush, I would just get the correct truck kind if you don't have them already, hope that makes sense

I recommend the Dirty Dingo plates just for that, if you want to keep your AC, you have a better chance if you use them.

The 2001 is a good year for a donor engine because they were still cable drive (vs drive by wire) throttles, this makes for an easy swap, the stock cable should work, you can just use lead fishing line weights to shorten it a tad at the peddle inside the cab, you can find the write up on my Restoring Rusty thread.