The Tragic Tale of ElSuperPinto

General karthief said:

Yeah, those things look like a carb, forgot you did the 'fake carb' thing, sorry.

Click to expand...

It mimics a carb real damned well sometimes. Like when it decides it doesn't like the weather... just like a damned carb... or that it wants me to feed it throttle on a cold start, just like a damned carb... or I have to adjust the idle speed screws... just like a damned carb.

Other times, it's nothing like a carb. Car sits a week? Still fires up, still primed with fuel, which doesn't happen with a carb with the modern E10-15 fuel poo: evaporates too fast). Hot starts? No problem. Vapor lock? Not happening.

The MSD Atomic isn't perfect, and I feel that its self-learning/tuning is way too damned slow. It also doesn't take care of all of the carburetor headaches like it promises to, and even though they advertised the hell out of it as a "returnless" system, the truth is, it should be run with a return line in 90% or more installation scenarios, including the current situation with my car now that I ditched the fuel cell for a stock fuel tank.

I feel like this car would be just as good with a 650cfm Edelbrock Thunder AVS carburetor (which is, in all irony, what it had before the EFI system), with the trade-off being that it'd be having to crank the engine to prime the fuel system every time i wanted to drive it if it'd sat for more than a couple of days. Other than that, it was just as convenient, and didn't roll coal like a diesel off idle the way the Atomic randomly does.

The original plan for the EFI conversion was a ported Explorer intake, with the Ford Motorsport spacer so it'd clear the valve covers (which it needs to clear the roller rockers), running 24lb injectors, and using an A9L computer and stock TFI distributor. I even had the engine assembled with all of it, but even with the 3" scoop on the old hood, it didn't clear the Explorer upper! I still wanted fuel injection, and ended up narrowing it down to a system from FAST and this thing. When Advance ran a 20% off coupon for anything at all, I pulled the trigger on this one (paid $2100 including tax back when this system retailed for $2500) since they didn't carry FAST.

If I go with the sensible notion of swapping in a 351W instead of a Coyote, I may go back to a carburetor, or switch to a completely different EFI setup. This 302, while running, and running well, has an awful lot of rusty sludge still in the cooling passages after hours of flushing today, and as I said before, should probably be rebuilt anyway with its history of being beat on mercilessly then stored for long periods of time over and over. If it comes out, it's not going back in, I have other plans for it.