It's been said.....

[ecksrash]

I've heard it said that "if a guy cant tune dual carbs, he has no business working with fuel injection". How true is this??? I'm really am a terrible dual carb guy. I have no idea why my carbs suck so bad and I surely don't understand tuning with drilled pieces of brass and ignition systems that came from 1930s era technology. May VWs have become so BASTARDIZED that the simplicity is no longer there. It may just be that in order to keep up with technology we've made all these wonderful complicated systems to control every little thing that is required to make VW engines run. Is it worth it???
I've had so much trouble getting my engine to run correctly with carbs, I have given fuel injection serious thought. So what say you??? Does a guy with horrible carb tuning skill have any business trying fuel injection?

[Chip Birks]

Sounds like a desperate plea from carb sellers trying to keep people away from the awesomeness that is EFI...
It's only money, and as long as it's your money that you are using to learn the ways of Efi and tuning I say go for it.

For what it's worth, I'm sure there are plenty of very good Efi tuners out there that couldn't tell the difference between a venturi and a velocity stack. And they still get along just fine...

[kangaboy]

I hope there is no truth that thought. Although I can tune a single carb quite well, the reason I wanted to get into EFI is because I hated messing with my duals. I just wanna learn to read computer data and hit buttons to fix it, instead of turning screws and "guessing" sizes.

[Max Welton]

I've had so much trouble getting my engine to run correctly with carbs, I have given fuel injection serious thought. So what say you??? Does a guy with horrible carb tuning skill have any business trying fuel injection?

I think it depends. It isn't just a matter of complexity, it is also a matter of the type of complexity.

There are all sorts of "recipes" people offer up for carbureted systems. I personally have a hard time just following recipes that are based on conditions that seem like they should matter but are not stated in the recipe. And the turn-around time involved for trying things really hampers my learning curve. Seemed like I was always waiting for jets.

But I work with realtime digital control systems for a living. So going Megasquirt-driven EFI was like coming home for me. It's just a different skill-set.

Max

[aircooledtechguy]

One thing I always tell people is that no one is ever born with this type of knowlege; it has to be learned over time. A really good book on carbs and how they work is the "Dellorto Superformance Tech Book". This book breaks carbs down Barney-style so even a purple dinosaur can understand with lots of drawings etc. Yeah it's about Dellorto carbs, but the principals are all the same no mater what you have on your car.

I've been a carb guy my whole life. EFI (specifically MS EFI) has been a lot to wrap my head around. It's really only a matter of doing the same thing as a carb only digitally and with a lot more precision than the vacuum a carb works off of. The other problem that I've run into was the EFI terms or the "lingo" associated with EFI,and how they relate to what I already know. For me, it's been a slow transition to EFI, but one that I welcome and embrace. It IS the future whether we like it or not, so we might as well jump in and get used to it.

Once you begin to understand it and work with EFI and all it's capabilities, you quickly come to realize that carbs and distributors are nothing more than a series of well planned compromises to make an engine run. EFI allows you infinite tunability of both fuel & spark (and a lot of other stuff too).

[Steve Arndt]

Carbs are quicker and easier to tune to get to 90% of potential I like to say. That last 10% takes a carb wizard/feeler and it is weather dependent how they behave. Getting to that 90% with EFI takes more learning and effort. The advantage with EFI is that last "10%" left on the table (of drivability, emissions, and road manors) are a easier to attain compared to carbs. Carbs are only perfect at one temperature and altitude when jetted. EFI can be close to perfect everywhere all the time.

That is how I like to describe it.

[Max Welton]

I got a call yesterday from a local guy who has already tried unsuccessfully to get MS working with a Subaru engine in his buggy. A local VW shop owner gave him my number.

In the conversation he said something about being afraid to put TS on his laptop because it required Java and his laptop was already full of bugs and viruses (viri?). He sounds like a pretty smart guy in terms of engines and such. It occurs to me that he may be someone for whom a less configurable FI system might be a better idea. He and I will get together soon and I'll get a better read.

What are the other options out there?

Max

[Steve Arndt]

New chromebook would run java right?

[Max Welton]

Actually I was wondering what other aftermarket EFI systems would not require use of a laptop at all.

Max

[Steve Arndt]

http://www.fuelairspark.com/fas/efi-sys ... injection/

wolf3d

Sdsefi

[Max Welton]

Things are right peachy when you have a V8.

Much bigger after market than our little cars.

Max

[ecksrash]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to get into this and rewire my head to learn the ways of FI.

[luftvagon]

I run TunerStudio on my Dell Chromebook 11 (with crouton and xiwi (h[url]ttps://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wiki/crouton-in-a-Chromium-OS-window-(xiwi)[/url])..

I kept running out of battery on a normal laptop... Now I run out of gas before I run out of laptop power (8h battery life)