FI Tech Frustration is back again

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CopperNick

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Won't disagree with your analysis. Still plan to properly repackage the FI Tech unit in its original boxes. Did manage to unship that goofy fuel pressure booster pump from its cradle and move it to the garage. Put the original charcoal canister back in its place and used the mounts that I made for the booster as the base for the canister. Once upon a time it used to have a band clamp type of mount that bolted to the rad cradle but not sure where that may have immigrated to. May look for it, or may just fab up a clamp that will bolt to the booster cradle and go from there. With that nuisance gone, I now have the room to put the overflow tank for the rad back where it ought to be.

Was not aware that AFR gauges existed by themselves. Think I could find some room on the dash for one if it were compact enough. Curious as to how it would be plumbed in and to where. Have sort of gotten used to being able to observe that ratio. The AVS comes with a whole laundry list of needles for adjusting the fuel delivery in the various ranges; no different from the Slide Barrel Mikunis that I used to mess with. Not even thinking about the possibility of maybe considering the notion of potentially doing anything with the needles. That it can be tuned so easily is a switch for me; i am used to dealing with dropping fuel bowls and having gas pi** all over the place.

As for the tunes, Nope, just one tune. And that is pretty much what it is set to as its default. Both the idle mixture screws and the idle stop screw can be tweaked but WHY??? I am not looking for tuning project here. Had about a decade of that with the FI TEch system and never did get it quite right. Very, very close to it at the end but then the whole tip in off idle schmozzle happened. The van does not see winter roads; it gets to hibernate in my infamous Bay One during the winter. The only thing that may happen prior to auto-rotation in the early fall is that I might pull the Monte out of Bay Two, rotate it to expose the passenger's side, and push it back into Bay Two. That gives me access to both the passenger's side door and the rocker panels, inner and outer. They both need replacing and I have had their successors sitting on the hood of the Caddy in Bay Three for the better part of a decade. You wanna talk about delays and deferrals,



Nick
 

stew86MCSS396

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Didn't realize you've been fiddling with the FITech for that long. As I've mentioned I don't own one but I do remember reading a thread on another forum which it was a lengthy read. Can't remember if was Chevelles or V8Buick. That person never seemed to have gotten it to work either. Sorta recall that "goofy fuel pressure booster pump" was a common denominator for people that had issues getting it to work and the only difference to getting it to work was ditching it and running a in-tank fuel pump. Idk hard to tell what it's doing without being able to pull a datalog from it. Another thing, no amount of EFI tuning will fix a broke engine, just sayin'. :(
 

Texas82GP

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Nick, the AFR gage has a sender that looks a bit like an oxygen sensor so you could likely reuse the place on the head pipe where the Fi-tech was reading if you wanted to add one.
 

64nailhead

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I’ve developed a hypothesis about FiTech. FiTech is owned by Holley, Edelbrock or some other carb manufacturer with the sole purpose of trying to convince people to never consider anything other than a carb again.

I know so many people that have bought one and ended up with a carb. I’m beginning to put 2 and 2 together to come up with an awesome marketing ploy.

What’s next, throw out the radials and start buying bias ply tires?
 
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ck80

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I’ve developed a hypothesis about FiTech. FiTech is owned by Holley, Edelbrock or some other carb manufacturer with the sole purpose of trying to convince people to never consider anything other than a carb again.

I know so many people that have bought one and ended up with a carb. I’m beginning to put 2 and 2 together to come up with an awesome marketing ploy.

What’s next, throw out the radials and start buying bias ply tires?
Bias ply tires do have their advantages...
 
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melloelky

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I’ve developed a hypothesis about FiTech. FiTech is owned by Holley, Edelbrock or some other carb manufacturer with the sole purpose of trying to convince people to never consider anything other than a carb again.

I know so many people that have bought one and ended up with a carb. I’m beginning to put 2 and 2 together to come up with an awesome marketing ploy.

What’s next, throw out the radials and start buying bias ply tires?
Awesome Sean Penn GIF
 
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64nailhead

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Bias ply tires do have their advantages...
I’ve got some recapped bias ply’s I’ll sell you. Let me know how they work out.
 

ck80

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I’ve got some recapped bias ply’s I’ll sell you. Let me know how they work out.
Virgins only, no retreads or recaps that have been around the block more times than you can count.

BUT....

You did save those recap bias ply didn't you
 
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64nailhead

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Virgins only, no retreads or recaps that have been around the block more times than you can count.

BUT....

You did save those recap bias ply didn't you
When I was in college, a decade or two ago (maybe working on 4), I bought a set recaps for my beetle. They were somewhere around $20/tire. I remember being ecstatic with all of the tread and price. About 5000 miles of pizza delivery and they were damn near bald. At 10K they were into cords. I paid $25 for the car and another $100 for the motor installed - those tires were a big investment.
 

CopperNick

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Well, if it is a conspiracy, it is certainly working. Lit the van off yesterday and it fired right off. Only issue was it would not kick out of high idle and tweaking the idle stop screw revealed that it did not feel like it was engaging the lever. Light bulb moment was when I grabbed the throttle lever and gave it a shove. Down came the idle; let go and back up it popped. Oh-kay, now this is something that I remember being an issue with my old Holley.

So off come the throttle cable from the lever and it totally relaxed. Held the cable up to it and found that the cable was just not coming out far enough from its sleeve to correctly attach to the pivot. I could get the two to mate, but doing so was pulling on the throttle arm and bringing the rpms up off idle.

Now like I said, this was an issue with my old Model 1850 Holley, and the remedy i came up with for it was to extend the cable tab by making a tab extender out of 1/4 inch thick aluminum, about an inch long, little over 3/8th wide. To do the fab I just drilled and tapped the end that attached to the existing cable tab and drilled the other end to a 1/4 to accept the pivot and it all went together and I had the slack that I needed.

So I went looking for that tab to re-use it and found that it had gone MIA; not in the Holley tuning parts box at all, which was where I had last seen it. However, what was there was a bracket of some kind that used a mounting tab that had two 1/4 inch holes already drilled in it and was about an inch +/- long. Now where's my trusty hacksaw?? A bit of cutting and filing to harvest the raw tab and make it look pretty and I had my new cable extender. 1/4 NC bolt and nylock nut to attach it to the factory cable end and slip the other end over the pivot pin and add the nylock nut to that, and time to try it again. Idle dropped out like it had an anchor attached to it. And the Choke kicked out just like it was supposed to.

At that point i took a peak at the tach and went back to the idle stop screw. Now that the cable was letting the lever fall back completely, the screw was actively acting against the lever and I had to take out the turns that I put in when I was trying to get an adjustment on it at the beginning.

Right now it is idling at about 1100 rpm and I may still drop that to 1000. In gear i am at around 850 which is a bit high, 750 would be nicer as it lets the t-mission move into gear without that jerk. I went with the manual instructions for setting the4 TV cable, And They Worked!!.

Most of the issues that I encountered were of the teething pains variety. Example? When I put in the 700R4 the dipstick tube cleared the FI unit and, once I undid the mounting bolt to get some room, the AVS got past it and it cleared the choke cap as well. RE-attached the tube bracket and still had my clearance; I thought............... Found that, when it came time to set the choke, I could not get to the top screw on the cap. The tube was sitting right in front of it, not touching, but still being a nuisance and denying me access to the screw. The cure for that was to install a spacer up at the mounting tab which lifted the tube about 1/2 inch and gained me my adjusting room. However, what I got at one end I lost at the other. When I went to drop the air cleaner back on I found that its base tray now crashed right into the filler tube. Which meant I had to space the base tray. Fortunately Edelbrock offers spacers for just that purpose; one of each thickness from the accessory list is on its way.

Today was test and tune. Only the test went so well that tuning became unnecessary. Started, ran, idled, went into gear, drove and shifted. Thought for a bit I might have to add a click to the sleeve on the TV cable adjuster but even it seemed to come in as I drove. Made the test a dual purpose event by heading out to the grocery store for some vittles. Fridge was getting a mite low on edibles,.

As for the FI TECH, what may happen once I get the Monte running is that it might get fuel injection. The existing tank in it has feed, return and vent already plumbed in for the stock fuel system so no changes needed there. Would go with an in line electric pump and either run the return line or use a regulator/filter with the return built into it. That is already on the shelf. Would order and replace the TPS, just to have new one that has not been damaged or had a nervous breakdown. Would also score a used laptop to see if I could retrieve the maps from the programmer. Might not be possible since it is not hooked up to anything. Poor little bugger, it tried so hard to make me happy.


And, oh yeah, the mill in the van idles without a twitch, and is back to walking the walk that it used to have so long ago.



Nick
 
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