Fuel Injection and Electronic Ignition for VW engines - Speeduino Style

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These thing are all relative, Stan.

Maybe from the hinterland, all of California appears a vast vacationland of surf and sand and bright lights and glitterati, but if you live in one of the places that's on the travel posters (like surfer dude Jim), Sacramento is the sticks — a cow town of tumbleweeds, a dusty no place where you stop for gas on the way to Tahoe.

From the beginning, this was just somewhere people stopped on their way to where they were really going (175 years ago it was the gold fields, today it's Tahoe).

About the kindest thing anyone has ever said about Sacramento is that there's plenty of convenient parking here.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

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I think your gratitude may be a touch misplaced, Stan. It's really the volcano you should be thanking. So, a big Thank You to Haleakalā for making all of this possible

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It's true. I make monthly ritual sacrifices of automotive relays and spark plugs at the summit. Haleakalā has been generous.

@Sacto Mitch posted:

.These thing are all relative, Stan.

Maybe from the hinterland, all of California appears a vast vacationland of surf and sand and bright lights and glitterati, but if you live in one of the places that's on the travel posters (like surfer dude Jim), Sacramento is the sticks — a cow town of tumbleweeds, a dusty no place where you stop for gas on the way to Tahoe.

From the beginning, this was just somewhere people stopped on their way to where they were really going (175 years ago it was the gold fields, today it's Tahoe).

About the kindest thing anyone has ever said about Sacramento is that there's plenty of convenient parking here..

Do you mean to tell me all the Kalifornia guys don't meet down at the surf shack for shrimp tacos after work (at say, 3:15 or so)?

Again, I'm going to need a bit to process that.

BTW: I've been to Sacramento (well, on my way to Tahoe, but still...). You're the capital city, man. The pulsating heart of the Golden State. Big 'ol bear, right there on the flag - with the red star of revolution right up there in the corner.

Nice place. Still pretty crunchy for a sodbuster. 

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Yeah, capital city. That should tell you something, right there.

State capitals are often selected because of their central location or to appease warring factions from the major metropolises. Harrisburg and Trenton come to mind.

I spent some of my working life in Trenton and can report it possessed neither the worldly, cosmopolitan charm of Newark nor the civic energy of Camden.

I still think they picked Sacramento because of the parking.

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Bug o Rama is Sunday in Sacto ,

go early as it will be 110F later…….

Are you going to tell me Springfield, Illinois ISN'T the Paris of the Midwest? But, they've got the state fair and everything! A cow made out of butter! Tell me - how can Chicago compete with that? Or anywhere, really?

That's not all, Mitch Toll - not by a long shot! Springfield, Illinois and your neck of the woods have something else in common (as if being the capitals of respective collectives wasn't enough). Yes, there's more than comradeship of the eternal class struggle that ties our people's republics together. You see - Springfield was the departure point of the Donner Party! Before they were trapped in a horrific blizzard and began eating one another out your way, the Donner Party hailed from the Land of Lincoln... well, you know, before Lincoln was Lincoln.

Anyhow, I've driven from Springfield to Sacramento (in my speedster no less, and almost exactly 10 years ago), took the Hastings Cutoff and everything. I took beef jerky and almonds, so I never needed to eat anybody - but I could see how it might happen. Aside from the obvious similarities (being home to our respective Death Stars), there's less in common than you might think.

I know it's been a minute since you lived somewhere besides Shanga La, but back east here in the rust belt, we've got this thing (and I think you've heard of it) called winter. It's why they call it the "rust belt", see - because we salt everything down for 6 months or so and throw the entire place in the freezer so it won't spoil. I'm not sure it's working, because everything's kinda' faded and tattering around the edges, but we'll probably give it a try again in a few months.

As you might guess, this really cuts into "surf-shack time", and makes the cars rust, which assumes people drive actual cars here (they don't). Cars are pretty bad in the snow - you need a killer monster-truck (the kind The Atlantic hates), or you're going to have to tough it out until the plow comes.

Regardless, trucks rust too - even the really nice decked out big ones. Rust is sorta' the great class leveler.

Now, I know everybody likes to compare themselves to the guy who's got it a little better than they do - but you've got to give me a little rope here. I'm just not sure lumping Sacramento in with Peoria is exactly the same thing.

I mean, can you honestly say you've got anything to compete with Vanna Whitewall, our very own 17 ft tall, fiberglass bikini model (with a weird grimace) on a tilting concrete stand?

Vanna's been selling tires for Plaza Tires down on Washington St. since this sort of wanton sexpolitation was considered acceptable.

You might have amazing cars and great weather - but we're not sending Vanna your way, no matter how many shrimp tacos you offer.

I had forgotten about Vanna! II used to see her when I would take my life in my hands and go down there to shop at that big discount store. Usually for liquor.

Don't forget that Wyatt Earp was a resident of P town for a while and was arrested for running a bordello on a barge out in the river. You won't see that in the Tombstone movie.

I have no reason or excuse for going off on this tangent.

@Sacto Mitch posted:

.I think your gratitude may be a touch misplaced, Stan.

Sure, Mike is a capable guy who has accomplished a lot with this project, but it's really the volcano you should be thanking.

I mean, besides being capable, Mike is also a reasonable guy. If he lived somewhere normal, like Sacramento or Peoria, he probably would have been perfectly content with a nice pair of Webers or Dells. It's not like he's posting lap times on his Facebook page or trying to blow off the locals in their hotrods at every light change (do they even have traffic lights on Maui?)

But what are you going to do when there's a 10,000-foot volcano in the neighborhood? You're probably having to negotiate 7000 feet of elevation change every time you go out for tacos or pick up the dry cleaning (do they even have dry cleaning on Maui?)

So, a big Thank You to Haleakalā for making all of this possible and a tip of the hat to Mike, too, for being in the right place at the right time.

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The humor is all excellent and such, but you are a little off the mark Mitch.

Mike was a Carolina boy who ended up in the northeast, then eventually in Hawaii. He was playing with juice , turbos, wires, and ECUs LONG before he moved to the volcanic islands.

But having said that, he certainly did the same for me as for Stan. I was thinking about EFI for a long while. And suddenly, we have a guy who showed us that not only was it possible, it was able to be completed.

Mike comes on here with a tarp-tent home build of a CMC. But he doesn't BUILD it like a typical shade-tree cob-job. He actually BUILDS a great looking, well finished car. Then he proceeds to assemble a home-made harness and plumbing for EFI.

The whole time, he's giving off that Opie/Mayberry aww-shucks vibe.

He's also been helping me learn and lessen the steepness of my EFI learning curve.

The man is a national(SOC?) treasure.

@Panhandle Bob posted:

I had forgotten about Vanna! II used to see her when I would take my life in my hands and go down there to shop at that big discount store. Usually for liquor.

Don't forget that Wyatt Earp was a resident of P town for a while and was arrested for running a bordello on a barge out in the river. You won't see that in the Tombstone movie.

I have no reason or excuse for going off on this tangent.

It's sad but obvious that you never really belonged to P-town, Bob, or you'd still have a soft place in your heart (head?) for Vanna, our veritable Venus rising from the slush.

Also, how soon you forget the "big discount store", Unclaimed Freight Store - home of the 16 oz single, conveniently located just up the street from A. Miller and Company  Scrap Metal (the jewel of the Midwest).

That stretch of Adams is kind of a one-stop shop - convenient to strip copper from the abandoned houses of 61605, take them to Miller's for cash, then down to UFS for some Mad Dog 20/20. Everything within walking distance.

Regarding Wyatt Earp's bordello - I did not know that, but the surprising part (given P-town's checkered history) is not that Mr. Earp ran such an establishment, but that anybody cared. I was under the impression that as long as a speakeasy or cathouse paid their taxes, nobody much cared what happened back in the day.

Yessir - it's just like Kalifornia here.

@Stan Galat posted:

I'm sorry, I'm a bit hard of hearing. Did you just call Sacramento "normal"? I'm going to need a minute to process that.

Sacramento is not San Francisco. Other than both of them starting with the letter "S", they are a world apart. Except around the capitol. That place is anything but normal/

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Stan, I can see why you would be proud of Vanna, and I would never do anything to lure her here.

But for all the talk of steadfast commitment to her roots, her dress tells me she may have tired of your winters and has been doing some California dreamin' of her own.

White walls don't sell the way they once did.

At some point, we all must take stock, reinvent ourselves, and move on.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

.Stan, I can see why you would be proud of Vanna, and I would never do anything to lure her here.

But for all the talk of steadfast commitment to her roots, her dress tells me she may have tired of your winters and has been doing some California dreamin' of her own.

White walls don't sell the way they once did.

At some point, we all must take stock, reinvent ourselves, and move on..

Fear not, El Mitchster - Vanna's got it covered (literally) in the snow.

The fiberglass skirt/shirt combo gets busted out in November or so, and stays on until May. It's just like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano*.

_{*only slightly different}

Thanks for the update, Stan.

And I understand why you posted this today - a gentle reminder that the fashion forward Vanna sells no white walls after Labor Day.

@Robert M posted:

Sacramento is not San Francisco. Other than both of them starting with the letter "S", they are a world apart. Except around the capitol. That place is anything but normal/

IMnotsoHO, both municipalities are totally abnormal.

Just saw this CBP kit on FB. It's a smokin' deal if you want to get most of the parts needed to EFI cheaply. https://www.facebook.com/group...62342009&app=fbl

Señor Mike:

When I click on your link I get this:

Awww. It's because it was posted inside a FB group (air cooled VW parts for sale). The cost was $800 but it's pending now.

Thanks for posting the info (even if it is too late now), I too ran into the issue of not being able to see the page.

That is a really good deal, even if you only use the "hard parts" (intake setup, fuel pump, etc...) and go in another direction for the electronics (ie: Speeduino or MegaSquirt) if you don't want to deal with CB's somewhat proprietary/closed system  "Black Box".

Yeah, that's Gen1, which is using, get this: a Geo Metro ECU. Yup, they used a 3 cylinder ECU and because it was batch-fire, it doesn't really matter. I'd rather run carbs.

But yes, the HARD parts are good, but you'll probably want to swap the injectors for some modern high impedance.

This update addresses how to adjust Speeduino for a type 1 engine with individual throttle bodies and air conditioning. Probably an edge case, but maybe someone will need it.

The Setup: 1776 cc, 45mm ITBs, 90 amp alternator, CBP performance pulley, Speeduino engine load set to Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) rather than the usual Manifold Air Pressure (MAP). Cars with ITBs usually respond better to this setup (Alpha-N).

The Problems: Occasionally, when waiting at a stoplight, the engine would stall if the AC was on. Idling for a long period of time with the AC on made the oil temp go above normal.

Diagnosis: I began by trying to make it stall by idling down quickly with the AC on, while I was datalogging. I couldn't get it to stall, but I saw my air:fuel mixture was leveling out around 18.5:1. My normal idle mixture is around 13.8. My engine runs hotter if the AFR is very lean (in the 17-19 range). The engine was getting an extra load at idle because of compressor drag, but since the TPS value was still 0 (idle), no matching changes to the fueling happened, making the engine run lean. If you were using Speeduino setup to use MAP as the engine load value (Speed Density), then it would have compensated as the MAP value rose. Further data measurement noted that battery voltage at idle (900 rpm) dropped to 11 volts when the AC evaporator fan, condenser fan, and oil cooler fan were all running.

Lean Fix: Speeduino can use different fuel tables or spark tables based on events occurring in the engine. The fix I used was to send Speeduino a signal when the AC compressor is engaged. The secondary fuel table switches into place when Speeduino sees the compressor signal. I just copied the regular fuel table into the secondary table and adjusted the idle cells in the secondary table until the AFR was correct. No more super lean idles and heating up.

Voltage Fix: Speeduino has a couple of ways to let you set the idle speed and to maintain that speed. There's a temperature table that lets you specify what idle speed you want at each temperature. The Speeduino battery voltage sensor read around 11V with all of the fans on at 900 rpm. Raising the idle rpm until the battery voltage was slightly above 12V resulted in an idle speed of 1200 rpm. It's not as low as I like, but it's not obnoxious, either. Having a 12V idle charge will keep the battery in good shape for starts in the summertime even if we run the AC at idle a lot. The charge voltage quickly runs up near 14V once the engine speed is higher than 1500 rpm.

Stall Fix: While raising the idle speed to 1200 rpm should reduce the chance of a stoplight stall, I went ahead and setup the idle air and idle advance tables to quickly add advance and extra manifold air when the engine speed goes below the set value. Without any Speeduino control, the ITBs are set to idle at 800 rpm. Idle speeds above that occur when the Speeduino idle air controller leaks air into the manifolds or additional timing advance is added. The primary fuel table is set manually to give an appropriate AFR at idle.

You can identify the optimal spark advance at idle speed by adding advance and watching the MAP gauge drop. At some point, the MAP gauge will stop dropping and will start rising again. In my case, that's at 42* advance and MAP=57 at 1200 rpm (amazingly high, eh?).

I set the idle column at 1200 rpm of my spark table to 10* advance and have higher advance settings above and below 1200 rpm. The engine will naturally idle in this trough since the higher advance below 1200 rpm will kick it back up in speed. Note, if I set the trough to the idle optimal of 42*, this wouldn't work because there'd be no improvement in volumetric efficiency when the RPMs dropped and the engine would slow down even more.

Building on this principle, I set the idle advance table to add additional timing increasing as the rpms fall below 1200 rpms, but never exceeding the optimal timing total. The idle air control works more slowly than the timing advance, but it also adds additional air to the manifolds as the rpms drop. The result is that rpms drop normally to 1200 and are then rapidly caught by automatic timing and additional air adjustments. No more stalling.

Hardware: I had pulled a spare wire into the central engine area when rewiring last year. Speeduino has many extra inputs and outputs that you can configure to do various things using TunerStudio. I soldered a small jumper from input A15 to the external connector of the Speeduino and attached the spare wire to the terminal. Speeduino inputs are 0-5V DC and the AC clutch is at battery voltage. I designed a small resistor voltage divider circuit that would give a 3-5V signal when the AC clutch saw voltages between 10-15V. There are many ways to do this sort of voltage reduction, but this seemed to be the simplest and it works fine for me. I'm sure Gordon's wife could do better. Congratulations to the person who read to this point. You are either terrifically curious or you are considering inflicting EFI pain upon yourself. Cheers!

@Michael Pickett posted:

This update addresses how to adjust Speeduino for a type 1 engine with individual throttle bodies and air conditioning. Probably an edge case, but maybe someone will need it.

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You can identify the optimal spark advance at idle speed by adding advance and watching the MAP gauge drop. At some point, the MAP gauge will stop dropping and will start rising again. In my case, that's at 42* advance and MAP=57 at 1200 rpm (amazingly high, eh?).

I know this is a FI thread but I wonder if the principle might apply to any of us backward MFs running carbs along with programmable ignitions. Right now my off-throttle (high MAP) ignition timing numbers at idle are much, much lower: my "trough" is at 800 rpm at maybe 8 degrees (I'd have to hook up the computer to check the table). I'd thought the trough should only be a degree or two. You're saying it can be more pronounced?

@Michael Pickett posted:

This update addresses how to adjust Speeduino for a type 1 engine with individual throttle bodies and air conditioning. Probably an edge case, but maybe someone will need it.

The Setup: 1776 cc, 45mm ITBs, 90 amp alternator, CBP performance pulley, Speeduino engine load set to Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) rather than the usual Manifold Air Pressure (MAP). Cars with ITBs usually respond better to this setup (Alpha-N).

The Problems: Occasionally, when waiting at a stoplight, the engine would stall if the AC was on. Idling for a long period of time with the AC on made the oil temp go above normal.

Diagnosis: I began by trying to make it stall by idling down quickly with the AC on, while I was datalogging. I couldn't get it to stall, but I saw my air:fuel mixture was leveling out around 18.5:1. My normal idle mixture is around 13.8. My engine runs hotter if the AFR is very lean (in the 17-19 range). The engine was getting an extra load at idle because of compressor drag, but since the TPS value was still 0 (idle), no matching changes to the fueling happened, making the engine run lean. If you were using Speeduino setup to use MAP as the engine load value (Speed Density), then it would have compensated as the MAP value rose. Further data measurement noted that battery voltage at idle (900 rpm) dropped to 11 volts when the AC evaporator fan, condenser fan, and oil cooler fan were all running.

Lean Fix: Speeduino can use different fuel tables or spark tables based on events occurring in the engine. The fix I used was to send Speeduino a signal when the AC compressor is engaged. The secondary fuel table switches into place when Speeduino sees the compressor signal. I just copied the regular fuel table into the secondary table and adjusted the idle cells in the secondary table until the AFR was correct. No more super lean idles and heating up.

Voltage Fix: Speeduino has a couple of ways to let you set the idle speed and to maintain that speed. There's a temperature table that lets you specify what idle speed you want at each temperature. The Speeduino battery voltage sensor read around 11V with all of the fans on at 900 rpm. Raising the idle rpm until the battery voltage was slightly above 12V resulted in an idle speed of 1200 rpm. It's not as low as I like, but it's not obnoxious, either. Having a 12V idle charge will keep the battery in good shape for starts in the summertime even if we run the AC at idle a lot. The charge voltage quickly runs up near 14V once the engine speed is higher than 1500 rpm.

Stall Fix: While raising the idle speed to 1200 rpm should reduce the chance of a stoplight stall, I went ahead and setup the idle air and idle advance tables to quickly add advance and extra manifold air when the engine speed goes below the set value. Without any Speeduino control, the ITBs are set to idle at 800 rpm. Idle speeds above that occur when the Speeduino idle air controller leaks air into the manifolds or additional timing advance is added. The primary fuel table is set manually to give an appropriate AFR at idle.

You can identify the optimal spark advance at idle speed by adding advance and watching the MAP gauge drop. At some point, the MAP gauge will stop dropping and will start rising again. In my case, that's at 42* advance and MAP=57 at 1200 rpm (amazingly high, eh?).

I set the idle column at 1200 rpm of my spark table to 10* advance and have higher advance settings above and below 1200 rpm. The engine will naturally idle in this trough since the higher advance below 1200 rpm will kick it back up in speed. Note, if I set the trough to the idle optimal of 42*, this wouldn't work because there'd be no improvement in volumetric efficiency when the RPMs dropped and the engine would slow down even more.

Building on this principle, I set the idle advance table to add additional timing increasing as the rpms fall below 1200 rpms, but never exceeding the optimal timing total. The idle air control works more slowly than the timing advance, but it also adds additional air to the manifolds as the rpms drop. The result is that rpms drop normally to 1200 and are then rapidly caught by automatic timing and additional air adjustments. No more stalling.

Hardware: I had pulled a spare wire into the central engine area when rewiring last year. Speeduino has many extra inputs and outputs that you can configure to do various things using TunerStudio. I soldered a small jumper from input A15 to the external connector of the Speeduino and attached the spare wire to the terminal. Speeduino inputs are 0-5V DC and the AC clutch is at battery voltage. I designed a small resistor voltage divider circuit that would give a 3-5V signal when the AC clutch saw voltages between 10-15V. There are many ways to do this sort of voltage reduction, but this seemed to be the simplest and it works fine for me. I'm sure Gordon's wife could do better. Congratulations to the person who read to this point. You are either terrifically curious or you are considering inflicting EFI pain upon yourself. Cheers!

I read it all do I qualify for a prize?    More specifically I could concur with the lean mixture causing the engine to heat up something that I have experienced in the past with a wrong MAF sensor.  You really do not need that cooking up the heads.

@edsnova posted:

Right now my off-throttle (high MAP) ignition timing numbers at idle are much, much lower: my "trough" is at 800 rpm at maybe 8 degrees (I'd have to hook up the computer to check the table). I'd thought the trough should only be a degree or two. You're saying it can be more pronounced?

Actually, my idle column is around 10 degrees (my mistake). My normal idle MAP with this timing is around 67 kPa. I'm running 15 degrees in the columns on either side to make the trough.

If your idle speed rises rapidly because it wanders into the higher RPM column, either lower the difference in the higher RPM column or change the column to be further away in speed (e.g. change the 1000 RPM column to be 1100 or 1200 RPM).

@IaM-Ray posted:

I read it all do I qualify for a prize?    More specifically I could concur with the lean mixture causing the engine to heat up something that I have experienced in the past with a wrong MAF sensor.  You really do not need that cooking up the heads.

Ray, your prize: I'll buy you a beer when you come to visit!

@edsnova posted:

I know this is a FI thread but I wonder if the principle might apply to any of us backward MFs running carbs along with programmable ignitions. Right now my off-throttle (high MAP) ignition timing numbers at idle are much, much lower: my "trough" is at 800 rpm at maybe 8 degrees (I'd have to hook up the computer to check the table). I'd thought the trough should only be a degree or two. You're saying it can be more pronounced?

Ed, correct. It can be much more, but only at idle. You are using MAP as your load, correct?

Mike, this is awesome for you to sort out. Nicely done.

Back in the days of ancient past, if your NA engine stumbled just coming off idle it was common to advance the spark 2 - 4 degrees from the "normal" idle setting of 6 degrees (vacuum advance) and that would often cure it - Stumble gone...  

That was one helluva lot easier than messing with the carb(s).  People thought carburetors worked on principles of "Black Magic" even back then.

Stan is right. Again.

A kinda quote:

"90% of carburetor/ injection/ fuel problems are ignition."

@Michael Pickett posted:

I set the idle column at 1200 rpm of my spark table to 10* advance and have higher advance settings above and below 1200 rpm. The engine will naturally idle in this trough since the higher advance below 1200 rpm will kick it back up in speed. Note, if I set the trough to the idle optimal of 42*, this wouldn't work because there'd be no improvement in volumetric efficiency when the RPMs dropped and the engine would slow down even more.

There's the spot where I slapped my forehead.  That's elegant.

@JMM (Michael) posted:

There's the spot where I slapped my forehead.  That's elegant.

It is. I found the basic idea on one of the tuning forums!

@edsnova posted:

Right now my off-throttle (high MAP) ignition timing numbers at idle are much, much lower: my "trough" is at 800 rpm at maybe 8 degrees (I'd have to hook up the computer to check the table). I'd thought the trough should only be a degree or two. You're saying it can be more pronounced?

I did some testing this morning on the question you raised about how many degrees of advance the "trough" should be to help hold the idle steady. I made a test tune that disabled all idle air addition and idle advance.

At 8 degrees advance, hot idle settled in around 800 RPM.  Setting the bin below 800 RPM at 8 - 15 degrees didn't make a whole lot of difference in idle or idle recovery. Setting the bin below to 0 degrees advance reduced idle RPM and idle recovery.

The distance between the idle and the bin below made a difference, too. If I moved the bin below to 700 RPM, any changes up or down were much more pronounced in the impact on idle speed and recovery. Setting the bin below idle to 600 RPM (200 below) reduced the sensitivity of the settings (I'd recommend setting the bin below at least 200 RPMs away from idle speed).

Finally, I tested what optimal timing my engine liked at 800 RPM. 35 degrees advance seemed like the point at which idle volumetric efficiency was met (MAP readings didn't go any lower above 35 degrees at 800 RPM).  That means if you wanted to add timing around the idle trough to stabilize it when you come off of the throttle, you could make the bin below idle up to 35 degrees. In practice, when I played around with it, 2 to 5 degrees above idle speed advance seemed to work just fine.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Mike

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I did my own data logging for cold starts when I first got my Webers.

Just hitting the start button never produces a start within a half-second, no matter what incantation I try. Five pumps are way too many. Three are closer.

Two — and only two — are in the trough. This returns an almost instant start 87.3 per cent of the time. One less pump or one more and the volumetric efficiency must be rolling out of the trough and all over the floor.

Occasionally, two pumps don’t work. It may have been too many days since I last started, or it may be too cold, or it may be the first Monday after the first Sunday of the month.

In any case, the solution is not two more pumps. Once you have pumped twice, you are done pumping. Wait about 15 seconds and try again — this time with the pedal partially depressed.

If the engine has been running and everything in the engine compartment is all warmed up and you shut down and stay shut down for more than two minutes, you cannot use the above table for starting. You must substitute the warm engine table until it fires. The warm engine table does not use pumps or even partial throttle. Its cells are filled with various auditory cues and instructions for the quick-twitch muscles in the right foot that are too complex to list here. This table self-corrects after a few years of successful and unsuccessful warm-starts-after-two-minute-pauses.

I’m not saying my data will work for everyone, but it has strong foundations in folklore.

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@Sacto Mitch posted:

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I did my own data logging for cold starts when I first got my Webers.

I’m not saying my data will work for everyone, but it has strong foundations in folklore.

.

Finally, some information that most folks can use 😄

Fantastic read and a lot to read. I went and looked at a 1984 Beck 550 Spyder today that has done a whopping 50 miles since it was finished. The previous owner could never get the webers tuned right so he just parked it. New owner wants to enjoy it and I suggested efi for his 2180 and this conversation has helped me sell this idea to him, Thank You .

@Derrek Johnson posted:

Fantastic read and a lot to read. I went and looked at a 1984 Beck 550 Spyder today that has done a whopping 50 miles since it was finished. The previous owner could never get the webers tuned right so he just parked it. New owner wants to enjoy it and I suggested efi for his 2180 and this conversation has helped me sell this idea to him, Thank You .

Darren Krewenchuk built my motor 21,000 km ago. 2332 cc with Weber 38's. 3 kicks, 1/2 throttle and instant start hot or cold. And I should have added that it pulls very strong in all gears. 100 kph at 3,100 rpm.

Sounds like the 2,110 that I built with 40mm Dellortos.

Hop in at any temp, pump it 3 times and it starts right up and settles down in less than 30 seconds.

Sounds like the 550 owners need to have someone who knows what they're doing set up those Webers, like Danny Piperato ( @DannyP ) or Blackline Racing in Utah.

@Gordon Nichols posted:

Sounds like the 2,110 that I built with 40mm Dellortos.

Hop in at any temp, pump it 3 times and it starts right up and settles down in less than 30 seconds.

Sounds like the 550 owners need to have someone who knows what they're doing set up those Webers, like Danny Piperato ( @DannyP ) or Blackline Racing in Utah.

I agree. The setup on this thing is horrendous. Oil cooler is mounted directly in front of the inlet to the doghouse fan shroud. Someone built a cover over the rear of the car covering the transaxle, but inadvertently just introduced the hot air from underneath the engine right into the oil cooler and into the doghouse fan shroud, effectively heat cycling the engine. I have spoken with Gary Berg and if the customer decides to continue with the webers here in central Illinois, then Gary will go thru them after he gets settled into his new home and shop.