homebrewed electronic fuel injection photo journal

Any progress ?

 

yeah! I've been driving it as much as possible to get the bugs out. I have to fix a few things like front shocks, mounting the radiator better and some tuning. There are a few flat spots in the injection where there seems to be not enough fuel and the engine sputters, but that should be fixed with playing with the tables. Here is a pic of the maiden voyage my buddy took on campus.

 

So is the Megasquirt stuff easy enough to work with ?
Or do you need to be a computer wizz ?

 

I started with an old HD Tillotson snowmobile carb. I cut it in half and ground all the extras off. I also bored out the venturi section of the throttle bore to match the area where the throttle plate sits. I filled voids with JB weld and let it sit overnite then machied it in my lathe. After a few days i had the greyish model at the far end. I gave it to a friend who has a friend who works in a foundry . Apparently at night they clean the molds with aluminum . He made a mold from my sample and rough cast 6 new ones for me. I have been machining away at these for a few days. I had to build some fixtures but it is very interesting work and fun. Next will be boring the hole for the throttle shafts. I will spend a day of so making a fixture for that but this is very satisfying work for me. This is what they look like so far. Oh yeah it is for my six cylinder dragster .
Don

 

whoa! those look cool! very well done! Unkl Ian, the software part(messing with the tables) of it is a little murky and I'm still ironing it out, but there are a few good write ups on how to do it. right now im stripping all the paint off the car and i'll be able to work on it more during spring break. i forgot the pic!

 

subscribed.

 

Dolmetsch, do you have any more pics of the process? I'm really interested in aluminum casting! man.. maybe we should start a homemade fuel injection club on the HAMB? who's in?

 

interesting thread. I like how everything is brazed together!

 

ramaro, are you using wideband o2 sensors to tune with?

 

I will send all i took so far.
My biggest worry is boring the hole for the throttle shaft. I dont want to get it wrong! I have done a little bit of auminum casting hee but i am not any good at it. Dont have enough patience and knowledge to make 2 part molds. I discovered though that if you ask around almost somewhere in every municipality there is a small foundry casting aluminum. The cost is not bad. These particular ones cost me nothing other than time as the guy was interested in it. I once designed and had cast a top half of a tunnel ram style manfold . It cost me $150 . I was glad to pay it. It worked well too. There are some books about making your own lathe and milling machine that teach backyard foundry . They are written by David sombody but i forget the last name. Ginsley maybe?
Anyway of you can make a sample out of anything (wood or styrofoam is best) then they can cast it no trouble.
Don

 

Lindsay's Technical Books with Dave Gingery. Very neat books, all HAMB friendly! Good work Don.

http://www.lindsaybks.com/

 

I'd bet there is some art group at UofA that does casting... you could probably get them to cast something for a small fee. They'd make some money to support their program, you get your parts and a tax writeoff...

 

I am loving this thread

 

Yeah thanks! Gingery.
I am planning on a megasquirt for this deal.
Don

 

i've been working on rewiring the car and getting it down to a uniform bare metal. I want to spray clear over it(don't want to paint it for a while) and paint the roof cream from the beltline up. The hood hinges won't work with the fenderwell headers I built and the hood is too heavy to lift off pins, but I have a plan.
anyone know what this is?

 

Carbon fiber. That's just wrong haha

 

yeah its 5 yards of graphite-kevlar. I just had all my welding equipment and laptop stolen from a house I'm working on, so I can't weld or tune anything for awhile. Oh well...building the fiberglass mold for the hood should keep me busy! I need to find a real job now, since welding gates and fences for my neighbors was my source of income.

 

Sorry to hear about your gear being stolen, I really like what you've done though. Unrelated to fuel injection, how much have you lowered the wagon?

 

in the back, I took out 3 leaves and 2" lowering blocks, in the front, I got a little crazy and cut I think 2.5 or 3 coils. Its about as low as a 57 can go in the front without notching something. If I was to do it again, I would have spent the extra money to get drop spindles with the disk brake conversion, then remove only one and a half or so coils. I might try to find some stiffer springs from some big block car to get it to ride a little firmer.

 

crappy cell phone pick of graphite-kevlar hood. it weighs about 3 lbs. the chrome weighs twice as much! a lot of work still to do.

 

A little update. I posted these pics on dogfight awhile ago. Hated that intake(wayyy to ghetto even for me, but I learned tons from it)

I chopped the runners off the manifold and machined the surface flat:



Then I bought two sets of GSXR throttle bodies and machined up some linkage:







I needed some vacuum manifolding so I made these:



And plumbed them:



Next I built runners out of steel to transition from the manifold to the tb's(sorry, no pics).



I coupled the runners to the itb's using gastank filler tube. they work, but they look pretty scuzzy.





I also Installed a wideband O2. I have been driving to work for the past month and have been tweeking the tune. It's incredibly responsive and sounds fantastic at throttle. since these are smallish itb's (38mm) it performs fairly well in low speed traffic. next I need to make some filters and get some dragstrip data.

 

that is dam nice looking, when can we hear it running?

 

Yeah,
here is a video

 

That is interesting as all get out. Got me thinking abot my own. Thank you for all the great info on the thread guys. Mark L

 

Awesome thread. Thanks for posting all the info and pic's. Car sounds Sa-Weat
Been thinking the last couple of weeks about building my own system for a blown small block and really have no idea where to start , but reading this , gives me good insperation to give it a shot.

Cheers Ramaro

Shrapnel

 

i have been thinking, what if you used one large injector like say off a highway rig, maybe two injectors and had them remote located, removed their nozzles and fixed them to a distrabution box that then had 8 lines coming out and used hilborn injectors, if you follow me, then you wouldnt see 8 plastic injector on top of your engine?

 

Fantastic keep it coming!

 

What 8 plastic injectors? I also used Suzuki 750 GRSX throttle bodies on this injector I made for a Plymouth banger. But I put in Hilborn nozzles and made a mechanical fuel injector. Worked OK. For yours, I think it's great. I would not have cut up a Hilborn manifold but looked for a early throttle body or twin throttle body manifold. They always were junk from new.

 

this style of tunnel ram looks like a good start for a SBC if you milled off the runners.

 

Very impressive...

Call me.

I have a BuzzBox you can borrow.