carb or EFI?

importhater5.0 · Aug 21, 2006

Hey , i have a 90 5.0 Notchback 5spd, that was originally a 4cyl, and converted to a 5.0L before i bought it....After digging into the car a bit, and owning it for 2 yrs now, im starting to run into wiring problems even doing general repairs because it was kinda butchered when they wired the car. I HATE to have other people work on my cars, but i had a fuel injection problem that i could not figure out myself, so i had a buddy of mine who is a master mechanic at a ford dealership and he is the electrical expert. So i took the car to him, and he ended up finding the problem, and he traced all the wiring throughout the car, and recommended if i keep driving it to install a new wiring harness. I looked around and found that a new harness will run about 5-600 bucks for a new one. But im also debating just converting the car to carburated for simplicity, and budget. I have an Edelbrock Perf. 650 already from another motor i had. I was just wondering what you guys suggest. I will be driving the car ALOT!!!! I just dont want to kill my gas mileage, thats the most important. IF anyone out there has a 5.0 with a carb that is a daily driver and can let me know how it is i would appreciate it, or if you would recommend a new wiring harness.......and if so, how hard is it to install it, im pretty weary on putting a wiring harness in. Let me know what you guys/gals think, any help is appreciated!

dragnazz5.0 · Aug 21, 2006

if its a daily driver and youre worried about gas mileage i would go on ebay and find a wiring harness and use that one. its not hard at all to replace the harness. im sure replacing the body harness is no fun but the engine harness and dash harness really isnt that bad. id say go carb because i just did and i love it. but ive only been driving it for 2 days so i havent really had time for it to act up

v8only · Aug 21, 2006

you can get an entire parts car for that amount, grab the harness, sell the rest off at a profit.

fyi, on a 4 to 8 swap, usually all you swap is the computer harness, and maybe the headlight harness, so I'm assuming that's where your issues are. You shouldn't have any issues finding those harness for easily under $200. If not ebay, then the corral classifieds, which are much better than stangnet classifieds.

Don't go carb for a daily driver, you'll hate life. While it is easier to hook up, carb'd cars are not as efficient, and need constant tuning to keep em running right. Once you get your efi dialed in right, it'll provide years and years of consistent well behaved manners without issues.

Stick with the efi, you won't regret it.

R2D2 · Aug 21, 2006

v8only said:
Once you get your efi dialed in right, it'll provide years and years of consistent well behaved manners without issues.

if that was the case these forums wouldnt exist

v8only · Aug 22, 2006

sbftech said:
if that was the case these forums wouldnt exist

true, but the tech site is only one small part of this site. As well, many many many posts are for aftermarket upgrades and the problems resulting. It's common knoweledge that an efi setup will provide a mulitude of benefits over carburation for a daily driven type vehicle.

z2o_what · Aug 22, 2006

i have a carb. on my semi-daily driven '87, and i get suprisingly good gas milage. at least 15 mpg (town)

i have a new 600 holley (man. choke) and a weiand stealth intake and the car is 5spd...
i drove it on my paper-route (side-job) which is 2.5-3 hours, and is all stop-and-go driving and i only used a little less than 3 gal. per night. in my truck ('97, s10, 2wd, 4.3, 5spd) i average about 2 gal. a night.

Boss 351 · Aug 22, 2006

I just read an old rag article EFI vs. carb they even dynoed a 347 with both EFI and carb to test which one provides more power. In the end the EFI only had 1hp more than the carb.

Yeah EFI will be 2x as more expensive than carb and that's the only draw back HOWEVER EFI will be more efficient and you'll get better MPG so in the end it will pay for itself. Besides EFI is real good at adjusting itself whereas carb, well, you'll have to tune it for different altitudes and sometimes even the weather will effect the carb's performance.

I was going to switch over to carb myself and after searching and reading a lot of "EFI vs carb" threads, I'm sticking to EFI.

Busted07 · Aug 22, 2006

sbftech said:
if that was the case these forums wouldnt exist

Neither would the 4,765,343,567,7756,788,000 threads about surging idle.

I chose a carb after ALOT of research. If you dont know alot about carbs, you have 2 options.. learn as much as you can, or youll be trading 1 problem for another. Sure, EFI is more efficient, but for me, i wanted to look in the carb, and see if im getting fuel, not trace 100 feet of 15 year old wiring and sensors to fins out why my idle surges. I will not however, be driving mine every day.. maybe 2-3 times a week at most.

This website is very helpful.. http://www.jason.fletcher.net/

And look up threads by crazypete, jrichker, michael yount, me, and you will find alot of info on carb vs efi debates

Also, you will have to consider this... you have everything for efi right now. If you switch to a carb, you will need to buy an intake (pretty cheap) a fuel pump (can be a little expensive) throttle cable etc...

MrKwik · Aug 22, 2006

well since it is already EFI, cost to install isn't really an issue. A good used engine harness should be easy enought to find for $100-$200 at the most. No way I would pay $500 for one. And there is alot more to converting to carb than just the carb and intake. You would need to deal with the fuel pump and lines, ignition system, throttle cable and bracketry etc. so you would not end up saving any money there. I like carbs but for a daily driver that is already EFI...I say fix it and leave it like it is.

R2D2 · Aug 22, 2006

FarBeyondDriven said:
Neither would the 4,765,343,567,7756,788,000 threads about surging idle.

I chose a carb after ALOT of research. If you dont know alot about carbs, you have 2 options.. learn as much as you can, or youll be trading 1 problem for another. Sure, EFI is more efficient, but for me, i wanted to look in the carb, and see if im getting fuel, not trace 100 feet of 15 year old wiring and sensors to fins out why my idle surges. I will not however, be driving mine every day.. maybe 2-3 times a week at most.

This website is very helpful.. http://www.jason.fletcher.net/

And look up threads by crazypete, jrichker, michael yount, me, and you will find alot of info on carb vs efi debates

Also, you will have to consider this... you have everything for efi right now. If you switch to a carb, you will need to buy an intake (pretty cheap) a fuel pump (can be a little expensive) throttle cable etc...

I been running nothin but carbs for the last 15+ years, only efi I own is an F-350 V10 Dually truck, other than that all my big and small blocks are carb'd. Aint gotta tell me about them. You can keep the EFI stuff

jrichker · Aug 22, 2006

z2o_what said:
i have a carb. on my semi-daily driven '87, and i get suprisingly good gas milage. at least 15 mpg (town)

i have a new 600 holley (man. choke) and a weiand stealth intake and the car is 5spd...
i drove it on my paper-route (side-job) which is 2.5-3 hours, and is all stop-and-go driving and i only used a little less than 3 gal. per night. in my truck ('97, s10, 2wd, 4.3, 5spd) i average about 2 gal. a night.

Try 18.5 MPG average mixed city/highway on an daily driven EFI engine with over 95K miles on it. With today's gas prices, it won't take long to make up for any of the added cost of EFI.

Do the math:
15 MPG x 15 gallons = 225 miles
18.5 MPG x 15 gallons 277.5 miles

225/18.5 = 12.16 gallons I can drive 225 miles on 12.16 gallons while the carb car is stopped at the pump filling up his 15 gallons. How much does that work out to in savings?

Figure the difference in gallons:
15-12.16=2.84 gallons The EFI car uses 2.84 gallons less fuel than the carb'd car for the same number of miles.

Multiply the number of gallons saved times the cost of fuel:
2.84 x $3.00 a gallon =$8.52 savings

Figure 4 fill ups a month:
$8.52 x 4 = $34.08 savings a month.

For a year: $34.08 x 12 = $408.96

If I spent $200 on EFI parts, I am still $208.96 ahead at the end of a year. The $208.96 buys some nice go fast goodies...

The continued increase in gas prices will only serve to increase the savings.

If I spend time & educate my self on how EFI works and then apply that knowledge, I can be just as fast as any carb'd car that I would run against. However, thinking is hard work, and educated thinking is often very difficult...

v8only · Aug 22, 2006

I find some people are so intimidated about new tech. Hah, and these efi systems are old now too.

I dropped an explorer engine into my vert, and right away had issues. Had I just pulled the top half apart, and slapped a carb on it, I would have been done. What did I do?? I spent an entire year troubleshooting and learning on it. Learning how to set tps, to check fuel pressure, act, ect, and egr, vacuum, speed density, and fuel injectors, and learning how all these systems work together and effect speed density, and based off that data, make an educated guess to keep the speed density and fix it (which I did) or convert to mass air).

Best time I ever spent with my car. You learn a TON about efi, and that's what's absolutely necessary to carry yourself into the future. Today's musclecars (meaning late 90's to current) are all about obd 2 fuel injected setups. By the time they come down in price to where we start driving them, it will be all but impossible to put carb's on them. Either learn how to work efi, or be stuck with 60's technology and 80's cars for the rest of your life.

back when my vert was stock, I drove it for 86k miles over the course of 7 years. When I swapped the motor out, the engine had 186k miles on it, valve covers had NEVER been off, upper and lower intake had NEVER been off. Never once did I even touch or play with the tps,egr,act,ect etc. Over the course of nearly 100k miles, I swapped the spark plugs out twice, the wires out once, a timing advance for performance, and that's IT. No way in hell you're gonna drive a carb'd car 100k miles and not tweak and tune it at least a few dozen times.

dragnazz5.0 · Aug 22, 2006

well some of us carb guys understand efi and just want something different. my carb setup cranks up faster than the efi system ever did. it runs cooler and doesnt have a misfire like my efi setup did. im not bashing efi because i love it. its easy to work on and adapts to just about anything you do without a fuss. but its just like the guys above said. if the car starts surging or idling rough, you arent searching through wires or testing injectors. plus when you upgrade heads or whatever, calibrating the carb is a lot cheaper than buying new injectors and mass air meter and fuel pump

MrKwik · Aug 22, 2006

v8only said:
....or be stuck with 60's technology and 80's cars for the rest of your life.

some of us old dudes don't see that as all that bad a thing

R2D2 · Aug 22, 2006

MrKwik said:
some of us old dudes don't see that as all that bad a thing

not too mention that antique technology can still run the pants off your modern efi stuff. Funny how that works

Modular2v · Aug 22, 2006

You have figure out what you want to ulitmatlely end up doing with the car. . . in my case i switched my 88 to carb because i could not put the cam in that i wanted with the speed denisity set up and im using it for a race car not a dd

Busted07 · Aug 22, 2006

sbftech said:
You can keep the EFI stuff

Hell no, thats why i sold all of my EFI junk and went with a carb. not to mention the ease of maintenance when you have a carb. How long does it take to get a valve cover off an EFI car vs a carb'd car. The main argument most pro-efi people have is efficiency and gas mileage. my answer to both of those are: A. Sure its efficient, but its costs more to mod an EFI car than a carb'd car, the replacement parts (sensors etc..) cost enough to make some people want to give up the car entirely and it would take twice as long to diagnose a problem on an EFI car. B. we drive performance cars, why should a few miles per gallon matter? if you want economy, go buy a civic.

v8only · Aug 22, 2006

I'm 32, and I grew up with carb'd cars. A dart or two, my maverick, a 67 stang, and so on.

In fact, my maverick is getting a $15k restoration right now, and it's getting a carb'd rebuilt 86 roller HO motor with ported e7's a weiand stealth, and a good 'ol carb.

So, don't get me wrong, I love carb's. I love the simplicity of them, and tweaking with them

However, efi has grown on me a lot, and as I said before, it's the challenge that keeps me on efi (and cali smog ). Eventually, however, I'd like to efi the maverick, I think that would be a lot of fun.

8950HO · Aug 22, 2006

Boss 351 said:
I just read an old rag article EFI vs. carb they even dynoed a 347 with both EFI and carb to test which one provides more power. In the end the EFI only had 1hp more than the carb.

What was the difference in torque?

Boss 351 · Aug 22, 2006

It takes me about 20 minutes and both valve covers are off Not a big deal.

Don't forget that the EFI systems are old on our cars, mine is 17 years old. I had a strange ass problem and it turned out to be a faulty ground. But I took apart the entire wiring harness, removed the stock wrapping, checked for bad wires or connectors and put new protective tubing and put the harness back in place. I had some sand in some of the connectors and some corrosion in others. My car has 115,000 miles so it's not that bad really. I'm good for another 115,000 miles . The thing with EFI is that IT RUNS SO GOOD AND FOR SO LONG, we forget about it. And when it actually starts to act up, we get all confused and mad. When really if you take it all apart and lay it on the garage floor, it isn't so intimidating. I can get a new EFI MAF harness kit (from computer to engine, injector rails, etc...) for 350 bucks. But really you won't need to replace everything unless the car caught on fire or something.

I think it's funny some people on here will spend thousands of bucks on a new set of heads or other mods but leave the old HEGO sensors on there... You can get a new sensor and relay package from Ford Racing.

carb or EFI?

importhater5.0

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dragnazz5.0

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