Can a traditional car have EFI?

Despite the "tronic" in the name the first Bosch Jetronic systems were completely hydromechanical, except for a dodgy electric cold-start system.

 

I run EFI in my '35 with a 700R, economical with the price of gas here. Will I run it on my '46 Olds, yes? This time it looks more traditional with everything hidden.

Not totally traditional but traditional in looks with OEM trim and paint etc. I'm updating suspension, brakes, adding radial tyres and seat belts as well. Why, because the rules here are a lot stricter than over there; if you don't do it, you can't register and drive your car, easy as that.

 

As long as its under the hood and out of sight go for it same thing goes for suspensions and transmissions. Hot rodding has always been about improvement. Shit how many flathead guys back in the mid fifties hated over head valve motors? On an open car anything you see should be along the lines of tradition but not to a T unless you want to.

 

This system looks good.

 

Oh, you are NOT serious!!?? HAHAhahalolololmaorofl

 

NO SHIT!
i now have more question than answers,

 

Traditional styled-Yes, purely Traditional-No

 

3500 dollar intake manifolds are very traditional

 

Yeah, EFI definitely isn't "traditional" pre-'64, it all depends on where you draw the line, you'd largely have to rule out disc brakes, Bilstein shocks, radial tires, etc if you want to be purist about it.

 

How much did the first Hilborn setup cost in relative dollars?

 

Gee, this system looks good too. Not sure what that has to do with whether or not its traditional...

Considering that this IS the HAMB, I had better point out the obvious. Its not.

 

Since you mentioned it...

D-Jetronic came first in the '60s, widely used on VWs and Saabs and BMWs from the mid-late '60s into the mid '70s, this is what Bosch did with the Bendix Electrojector designs they bought. It was very much an 'electronic' system though the control electronics were analog with lots of discrete resistors, etc. It introduced the 'Bosch injector' package that's dirt-common now. It was a sort of manifold-pressure-referenced system like later speed-density systems, but all the 'calibration' was done in hardware and it lacked the kind of adaptation and self-diagnostic capability so critical to modern EFI systems.

Sensors were also a problem - today a manifold-pressure sensor is a little piece of black plastic and system responses to changes in load are mapped in software - back then you had a weighted diaphragm balanced between two springs, and how long do you think those springs stayed calibrated exactly as God and Robert Bosch GmbH intended? The biggest problems with D-Jet, though, were that (1) it predated widespread adoption of weathersealed electrical connectors, not a good thing when you've got a system highly dependent on just the right voltages and resistances and (2) few of the people who ended up working on it were able or willing to troubleshoot it correctly. If you swap enough parts on the customer's dime you eventually fix - by accident - that bad ground that was the root cause.

K-Jetronic was the mechanical system, easily identified by a big air-meter-thing (on Vee-engines it was usually in the valley under the air cleaner) with a black iron fuel-meter body on it, with one fuel line heading off to each cylinder. The air meter moved a plunger in the metering body to vary the fuel pressure to the mechanical injectors, but the metering was more complex than that, on the other side of a metal diaphragm was a reference pressure originally controlled just by a warmup system, later the K-Jet system was the first adapted to closed-loop oxygen-sensor use by sticking a D-Jet injector in the reference-pressure return circuit and dithering its duty cycle based on O2-sensor feedback. Fuel system pressures ran 65-90psi depending on application. I've owned a few K-jet cars, don't really want another, troubleshooting means a lot of time with a fuel-pressure gauge and a voltmeter. I'll spare you the discussion of KE-Jetronic (mechanical distribution but with lots more electronics) that VW stuck with for years (in part 'cause I don't know much about it anyway.)

Then came L-Jetronic in the mid '70s, which pretty much defined the configuration of a 'modern' fuel injection system. Widely licensed by the Japanese, the original configuration still used analog electronics and had a mechanical door air meter that (like the fuel meter on the K-Jet system) introduced a big restriction into the intake airflow. Detroit mostly stayed away for another decade jerking themselves around with 'feedback carburetors' and the like, by which time we got widespread use of microprocessor-based control boxes and (almost as important) consistent use of weathersealed connectors...then hot-wire MAFs, better control strategies, integrated ignition control, more and more and more sensors, OBD, OBD-II, returnless fuel systems with PWM-controlled fuel pumps to reduce evaporative emissions, redundant sensors and real-time fault monitoring (yeah this is law now too), etc.

But it's definitely not traditional.

 

I stand corrected. K-Jet is the only one I am at all familiar with, and then in its simplest forms.

 

So would you say its more or less traditional than $1000 grill shells, $8000 32 3W bodies, or $5000 S.c.O.T. blowers?

Dont be naive. Building a purely traditional car is not cheap.

 

Put up some pictures of your muscle cars, unless you have something traditional, than put up a picture of that.

 

That is what I do when I am places that are more traditional.





When Im rolling like this you dont know the difference.

 

I say build what makes YOU HAPPY......these TRADITIONALIST don't have to look and snarl up their nose at you...sooner or later you'll catch them in Lowes with a can of Flat Black Spray Paint in their hand...Ask them if their touching up their R?t Rod...hehehe...........Enjoy the sport...I don't like every car I see but most times I can find something about it I do like............

 

Yes, thats right Deto, as you pointed out last time, I own sixties era cars. We all get that. except you that is. I guess you spent alot of time on the short bus as a kid...

Oh, and by the way, I HATE chopped chevies. Probably even more than you dislike muscle cars...

Actually, none of my cars are muscle cars. My Duster was a factory 340 car, so that qualifies as a muscle car, but from the time I have owned it, it had a 440 in it which is not factory, so that would dis-qualify it as a "muscle car". My '66 Plymouth was originally a 318 car with a 383 swapped in, so again, no "muscle car" there, like the Duster, its a "hot rod". Falcon? No dice, 289 2bbl car with a 428 FE swapped in, again, no "musclecar" there. Chevy II? Only way that would qualify as a "muscle car" was if it was an L-79, alas no joy there either. So, in the future, when you make ANOTHER feeble, half-assed attempt to insult me, please be sure and use the correct terminology. Thanks.

 

See my post about D-Jetronic above. Most of the manifolding, etc. works fine if you want to convert to something newer or DIY like Megasquirt...unlike K-Jet stuff.

I suppose that's a bit like disc brakes that aren't too visible, dual-circuit brake plumbing, that power steering box down there under everything, Hydraboost or even a vacuum brake booster newer than Bendix Treadle-Vac, etc.

It's certainly not 'traditional' in functionality but it doesn't offend the eye.

 

JEM I actually have some '64 Disc brakes that I am using on a project. I may junk them and go back to drums if I don't like the way that they stop the car but they are '64s.

There actually a lot of disc brakes available pre '64 and actually got used on the street in your part of the country in the later '50s and early '60s. They normally saw track use but were available and did get some use.

One of the things that we have to keep in mind is that to say something was not done is like saying that the earth has never skipped a beat in its spinning and rotating. Commonly accepted that something was never done but pretty hard to prove. When we look at a magazine from the time period of say the '50s or even the '60s we need to remember that it is a microcosm. Their world was very small. Hot rodding spanned the entire country by the time the magazines started publishing what was within their reach. Magazines are a good place to start to learn what was happening but to really know or understand one must look beyond the scope of the early hot rod magazines. One of the things that I like about a few of the newer magazines is that they are starting to publish old picture albums from different places around the country. Those picture albums really tell the story about what was actually being done in different parts of the country by normal people.

 

A member here "Eddie's Chop Shop" used to have some great work posted here on hidden efi but his pics appear to be gone.

 

Oh, I know, and I'm not advocating a strict definition of 'traditional' - but you end up with a situation a little like '69 Camaros - every '69 Camaro ever sold was a Z/28 or a 396 SS, wasn't it? Never mind that giant pile of 250 sixes and Powerglides rusting out behind the shop...

In 1952 you had a lot of bailing wire, surplus aircraft instruments, parts cut with a hacksaw and a file, etc. and now guys spend a whole lot of money to reproduce those scrounged parts.

 

I like it, I was thinking about that same combo in my 57 F100 I bet you get mid 20's MPG.

 

This thread gives me gas.

 

First car I ever chopped was a '27 T. Did it in the street with a torch. I wouldn't want to do one that way again.

There was a time that things did get scabbed together, it was common. I think that as a community we should lean toward building the uncommon. I don't think that the disc brake thing was common, I know that several came out of a shop in San Bruno in the later '50s and early '60s. But like I said I am not sure how common that was.

Even the brakes I have are not something that is common. I sure didn't get them by going about looking, I just happened onto them. It not like you can go to you wrenchit and find a set. You can however still buy pretty much any caliper that Hurst Airheart ever made new from them still. They are no higher than any of the newer disc conversions. But you would have to build your own bracketry. I wish more fellas leaning in that dorection would look at them instead of going after the GM metrics.

 

Wow, I didnt realize that. That would be a really neat touch on a sixties era car. Good tip.

 

I found out by accident. I was looking for a pic for a fella and found out that they have a site.

Way off base for this thread but thanks for the bandwidth fellas.