Hi Neil,
the 212 had fuel pressure with needle vertical in the white both before and after rebuild. It had new filters, stretched spring and good fitting gears in main body with lapped cover.
Did not bother going any further as the air bleed issue was resolved and it started easily and ran fine for a show piece. Gauge may be the issue??
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Neil, I would say the packing would only affect your pressure if it was really leaking around the shaft and out past the gear. in a gear, pump end play can be a real killer for presser as it allows fuel to bypass. if it is leaking around your shaft you could have worn bushing in your gear housing or a worn shaft. changing the packing is easy and simple to start with.

Seems this BB swallowed my last answer to you Neil before I could post it s, here we go again.
The end clearance of the gears to the cover we used to aim for was around 0.001" If the pump was a clients we put new gears in if the end clearance to the cover was more than 0.002"--for a restoration low budget machine you could lap some off the gears to get them both the same length and then skim a bit off the body to get the 0.001" clearance.
We always treated each gear as if it had burrs and so de-burred them just before fitting them--seen many finely finished surfaces ruined by burrs on gear ends and tooth surfaces.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

That would be an interesting info, Eddie! Hope you'll be able to share.

Refreshing this transfer pump thread for our new member and his D2