w block efi

[Geary Trussell]

I want to get some information and experiences on adapting efi to a wblock. I
have currently fabricated a ramjet/tpi intake for my 348. I am now trying to spec
out a engine management system. I have researched and talked to several suppliers
which most use air speed density as the base for their systems. One company
offers a mass air flow ( I believe to superior to speed density) but their components
are not friendly to my intake set-up. I know there are a few guys on this forum who
have or currently adapting efi to their wblock. I would appreciate their response
on the engine management system they are using and the tuning experiences.
If there are any companies providing an air speed density (map) system thats
tuned for wblock applications. thanks

Geary

 

[cac646]

I've decided to go with the Holley HP EFI setup mainly because it has the ability to control spark as well as fuel. Plan to use a BBC hall effect Mallory distributor with an adapter sleeve for the ignition trigger because I don't like the look of a crank trigger. I'm guessing with a tpi you would want to run sequential which would require a cam sensor. I had a brief look before settling on a throttle body type setup and didn't see anyone offering something that would work with a W motor. I also looked at Megasquirt and FAST before choosing the holley. I've used Performance Electronics as en ECU on a motorcycle engine. The unit was very well built.

 

[threeimpalas]

Lamar and Hilborn are the only two companies with EFI intakes that are specific to the W-engine, but they both use a 3rd party control system. You will still need to "tune" it to your specific engine; each individual engine is different.

Unless you plan on driving the car in all conditions and altitudes, the SD systems will be more than adequate. Choose whichever fits your budget and offers the features you need: FAST, Accel, BigStuff3, MegaSquirt, Holley, Electromotive, etc. If I were converting a manifold to EFI (or building one from scratch), I'd probably lean towards using the FAST, BigStuff, or Accel systems. They may be overkill for what you need/want, however.

 

[58 Apache]

This is Great

Any chance you could post a picture of your manifold. I have plans of doing something simular for stroked 348.

 

[Geary Trussell]

I will try to post some photo's soon. There is another supplier for wblock efi.
Their system looks very good and uses mass flow. Mass-floefi is the name of
the company. Can we get a post from Gerry Gostenik on his fuel management system for his 409 suburban or any other person who has a current wblock
fuel management set-up.

thanks

 

[impalamike.com]

It looks like many EFI systems use single plane manifolds. I wonder if Aubrey's manifold would be a good one for conversion.

 

[Geary Trussell]

Mass-floefi uses Aubreys intake .

 

[impalamike.com]

Thanks Gary!

http://www.massfloefi.com/mass-flo-systems-chevrolet-c-1_6/chevrolet-348-409-efi-system-p-11

System includes:
•Your choice of intake manifolds, a four barrel single plane from Bruneau Performance or a Dual Plane Edelbrock Performer RPM.


•Our own custom 1000 CFM 4 bbl throttle body. It features all aluminum and stainless steel construction, sealed ball bearings on the throttle shafts, and progressive linkage. Comes complete with idle control motor and throttle position sensor. This is absolutely the finest 4 bbl throttle body on the market!


•Jumbo fuel rails and mounts. Rails have 9/16" diameter bores providing excellent flow and dampening characteristics.


•Our custom compact high flow patented mass air meter. The air meter is concealed within the air cleaner of your choice to maintain the vintage look! Systems are also available with our patented Pro-M mass air meters for draw through or blow through application.


•Complete production quality wiring harness. This stand alone high quality harness allows easy installation of our EFI system into any vehicle without connecting to your existing harness. For ease of installation each harness connector is individually labeled.


•Production mass air sequential electronic fuel injection computer.


•Eight high quality fuel injectors, sized to your application. The injectors are sized to allow ample room for large increases in horsepower. These fuel injectors are held to much closer tolerance than typical production injectors.


•All needed sensors. Most of the sensors are mounted right on the injection system for a simple install. No crank sensor to complicate the process!


•High performance billet aluminum distributor complete with ignition module, rotor and cap. Our entire ignition system is contained within the distributor and ECM. Just install the distributor and plug it into the harness. No spark boxes needed. However, after market capacitive discharge ignition systems, boost retard systems, nitrous control systems, rev limiters and shift lights can all easily be added.


•High performance coil featuring faster rise time and increased spark duration for increased performance. This coil comes with heat sink and mounting bracket.


•Throttle body base gasket, throttle cable bracket, assorted hardware and fittings and detailed instructions for a simple turn key installation.
All of these components are absolutely the best quality available. Unlike the competition, we will never sell you something that is "good enough" just because it costs less to produce.

 

[jwhotrod]

EFI systems for 409s

I also have custom built "tpi" efi setup on my 409 that originally had a S& P basically stock GM management system on it which ran OK but we went to ACCEL thruster EFI management in order to get off the batch firing GM system and be able to individually fire the injectors to "finer balance" the system to the air/fuel ratio required by each cylinder and the manifold "restrictions" placed on it.

The manifold was originally built with approximately 198 cu/in of dispacement in the plenum that fed the cylinders, along with the throttle body placement caused #1&2 to run EXTREMELY FAT 2345 to run ok and 7&8 to run EXTREMELY lean brcause of the flow chararistics of the air in the plenum. So we balanced out the fuel flow in the moteer with the injector pulses and made 435 hp with long tube exhaust headers

Cut the top off the manifold added 2-1/2 inches to its height, went from 198 cu/in displacement to 417 cu/in raised the throttle body 1-7/16 above the top of the runners, rebalanced the same injectors to the flow characteristics now and made 512 hp with the same headers NO OTHER changes.

So whar I am saying is FAST efi ACCEL efi, and all the rest beyond being able to tune "finer" anre not as big a difference asis the manifold and throttle body choices and header choices. The old thing about hese moters being airpumps IS KEY to success. If you cannot get the air/fuel mixture packed into and get it efficently out of the cylinders the rst of it is fluff.

So manifold design her for a TPI is similar to a tunnel ram, the plenum or storage tank for the runners NEEDS to be 80 to 100% of engine displacement. orher wise you will starve the motor under WOP.

The throttle body CANNOT lay right on top of the floor of the plenum where the runners attach because it will "venturi" 1&2 cuasing the fat condition and pack air that should have gone to 1&2 into 7&8 in the back of the plenum cuasing the lean condition. So now you say thats ok you can balance the injectors or for that matter the jets in a carburator to compensate. That is true, BUT it is a comprimise at best, because we knew when we comprimised there was 70 or so MORE HP that we could get if the manifold was changed.

So now that we changed the manifold and uncomprimized the fuel we are making that 70 hp we never would have had.

The only reason I know this is the motor was on the Dyno at the Race Shop after the rebuild last fall for run in and tuning. and we knew even that it was running good and sounding GREAT there was more there to be had. So it is alot more complicated then just selecting a management system. As always everything MUST work together.

Big Jim

It has been a journey to get to where I am with this build and it is not over yet, but the drive train is settled now on the the car.

:takethat:takethat:takethat:takethat

 

[jwhotrod]

sorry

Boy I must have been more asleep than I thought last night when I wrote that. Sorry for the bad spelling and diction that is not me.

Anyway, I think after all of my trials with the EFI on my 409 and all of the other things we have done witth carberators, etc through the years, I am firmly convinced that EFI is the way to go, what I was getting at last night was just because you THINK a manifold, fuel injectors, exhaust and all are the best they can be, a DYNO run can be an eye opener. For instance when I refered above to making 435 hp with long tube headers on the dyno in the original configuration, what I didnt say was that we rhen swapped the long tube headers for sanderson blockhugger headers, and a 2-1/2" stnlss exhaust i built with Stainless works flow thru mufflers and the moter fell flat on its face not making more than 365hp no matter what we did with the tune. These motors are AIRPIGS, they want a lot of air coming in and low restriction going out.

So, I am building the new exhaust for the car with 3" stainless tubing and magnaflow 5x9 stainless mufflers. with a custom built set of long tube headers fitting my 35 chevy sedan.

with the mods above and the long tube headers built for the car it made 512 hp last pull. I will post pictures soon.

Big Jim

 

[petepedlar]

Gerry Gostenik on his fuel management system for his 409 suburban

Gerry is the man....... I looked at his Suburban at Thompson. The system he has works great and you need to get the details from him.

Dave

 

[Geary Trussell]

thanks for everyone's replies, I really appreciate it. jwhotrod you sound like
you have alot of experience. I am trying to make a smooth running and good idle
engine. High horsepower is not my objective on this engine though of course I am
not opposed to more horsepower. My intake has approximately 320 cu in's volume with the throttle body 2.5 inches above the wedged shaped plenum floor. The individual runners are 3 inches tall. what would be your thinking on a fuel management system based on these spec's. and expecting about 300 hp. also petepedlar how can a person get in touch with Jerry?

 

[lnirenberg]

I have the Mass-flo system on my car and it uses a 10+ yr old Mustang brain. A base tune is programmed into the system and then it learns from there. I think mine was the 1st 409 system he built in spring '09 and it uses a modified Edelbrock intake. The only problem I had was forgetting that the Comp cam I used had a 4/7 lobe swap which was challenging until the gray matter kicked back in.

 

[jwhotrod]

TPI experience

Well, I will try this again, I tried replying last night and did something that lost it all. Herre goes nothing.

My saga started with a motor that had not been rebilt right before I bought it, and the TPI setup that was custom built for it was a failed atempt at a Developement project. By that I means this manifold was built 8-10 yeares ago when a lot less was known about EFI. And they actually were not way out in left field, but misguided.

So, I will tell you a little about my 409 and the TPI as it was modified and hopefully it will help you.

My 409 is a'64 HP car block with 690 heads that have been ported/polished, stainless steel valves and hard seats, roller rockers. A Sig Erson Hydraulic roller cam with 4&7 reversed, Diamond 10:1 forged aluminum pistons, bored .030 over stack rods and crank.

The aluminum TPI Manifold was built by a guy in Mississipi for S&P and had a stock 42mm throttle body, 29# injectors and a GM ECM with a custom programed chip and harness (speed/density) from S&p.

Right off the bat when the motor was rebuilt correctly per above at the Race Shop in Seymore WI and it was run in on the Dyno it became readily apparent it would hardly run with the 29# injectors so they were swapped for 60# injectors and the motor was run in (broke in) successfully. but it was also apparent that the manifold was incorrectly built as I said before, the volume of the plenum was only 198 cubic inches and the throttle body was alying right on the #1&2 runners causing air starvation and an extremely rich condition in #1&2 and a very lean condition in #7&8. these were so far out of balance the gm ECM could not compensate and balance the fuel load. So at that point we trashed the GM "system" in favor of an accel DFI Thruster setup that would sequentially and indvidually fire the injectors and allow the pulse width to be changed individually to balance the motor. At this point with long tube headers we could make 435 HP and as i said with my block huggers and 2-1/2" exhaust it put such a resriction on the motor that the HP fell to 365HP.
So now we determined that we were not getting enough air into the motor or out of it either. So having read all I could and with advice from the Race Shop we endeavored to increase the displacement of the plenum from 198 to approximately 403 cubic inches, go to a BBK 58mm throttle body and build custom long tube headers with 3" exhaust to fit my 35 Chevy and that done made 512 hp on the dyno.

We knew that we were :missing: about 70 HP with the restrictions present and I WANTED that HP. Understand too this is a streetrod not a racecar!!

But perfomance is performance and if the motor is capable of it it should DO IT,

So, i dont know if your setup is as far out of wack as mine. but I do know this, if the motor was not on the dyno when we started it and got it balanced it was eunning good and sounding good, and for most street applications it probably would have been fine, but now I KNOW it is at its potential for how it was built.

Aceel, Fast, Howell Engineering the setup mentioned above are all great systems, each has its strength and weakness. Charlie Sykes at the Race Shop is very knowlwedgable and a great guy to talk to. They use fast software in their Alcohol race car and Accel stuff on their Dyno and fro other apps. Call them if you want they can help, and they understand the 409's as well. 920-833-1188. attached are the before and after shots of my setup.

Big Jim

 

[Geary Trussell]

thanks Big Jim your info is great for me. I have 29# injectors which now concerns me.
I am hoping my plenum size will be ok. I assume that the accel thruster requires a
lap top computer for tuning. Still like to hear from Gerry on his set-up.

thanks

Geary

 

[jwhotrod]

Accel and laptop

That is true, it comes with the software and cables to hook up. I feel safer that way to, because now I can load the tune off the ECM in the car, play with it, flash it back to the car or send it up to Charlie (Race Shop) for advise or other things. Any more you can get a pretty nice netbook or what ever they call them pretty cheap. Self learning systems are good, I guess but what are they learning and against what standard are they comparing?

As to the 29# injectors, think about it, my 350 zz4 TPI'd small block runs 29# injectors, and I didnt think anything about it at all until you realize that we are dealing with another 60+ cu in dispacement. They just were not producing enough fuel fast enough to satisfy this motor. So I think it makes sense when you think about displacement.

If at any time you want to talk thru email I am jwhotrod@verizon.net and I usualy check my email at least once a day.

Big Jim