EFI blower cars

Are the EFI blower cars gaining in popularity?

I have a BAE 8X turbo setup that I may want to convert to a blown deal.

 

You already have a full turbo deal why would you change? Issues, struggles?

 

Roots or screw?....

 

Interesting. A lot of the procharger racers use a blow through carb. The significantly more expensive, recent option is throttle body EFI. I wonder if the same holds true there?

 

The fact of having an electronic injector above the blower scares the hell out of me. What if one quits working? What if it eats a the injector driver circuit? I’ve had trouble out of certain electronic injectors at certain duty cycles and fuel pressures, which one happen to stumble upon by accident, it would be a shame to eat a blower $32,000 roots or $16,000 screw for such a simple mistake. I’ll take the turbo car all day long, the Procharged stuff is starting to run really good also. I’m a mechanical injected, blower, clutch guy at heart.....

 

Sorry to hear this. In my mind this does not mean that EFI blown is inferior to, or has less potential than, MFI. People are simply suffering early stage frustration.

How many years has MFI been explored? How many years has EFI been explored? Think about that for a minute.

It all boils down to a matter of appetite for treading new paths. Those who persist will move forward.

 

You could be right Mike......

Do you have any gut feelings for why they might have gone faster with MFI? Fuel? Ignition? Control? I find this a fascinating topic, always curious about other's thoughts and findings.

The turbo guys have certainly gotten EFI to work for them. Look at what the gang at Pro-Line and Steve Morris are doing these days.

 

I think the next big thing for a blower car is gonna be coil on plug. We have dialed in mfi now that it’s very efficient ! But coil on plug could be the next thing that ties us to the next level. You have all those stubborn cylinders that need more fuel or short rod and piston. I would think that controlling cylinders individually would let us stop with different rods and pistons in each hole

 

I talked to some people in the know some time ago and they alluded to having trouble with the coil packs and they needing some refinement to work properly. I spoke to others that say they work fine. You can run a pro mag with most ecu’s these days. I guess the idea is to have 8 coils fire one time instead of one coil firing 8 times.

As far as the power goes, maybe it’s a fuel atomization thing. I have seen several back to back dyno tests on N/A stuff, some of which were using the same manifold, between carb and EFI. In the ones I’ve seen the carb made more power. They say it’s the early atomization of the fuel that cools the intake resulting in extra power. These tests were done with the injector in the standard intake port, angled towards the valve. Maybe something similar is happening on the blown stuff. Mike, any idea of the difference in intake temps between the MFI and the EFI?

Instead of different rods why don’t guys change the profile on the piston to achieve they same result? I’m assuming by putting a shorter rod in we are aiming to reduce compression in that hole by sinking it down a few thou. Just seems to me really set yourself up for error at the track in a mad thrash to make next round.

To touch on the comment about the EFI and turbo stuff, I remember Petty saying that the EFI was worth about 300 horsepower when they switched.The problem with MFI on a turbo is you need some serious accelerator pump action when the boost comes in, which is hard (not impossible) to accomplish. I also spoke to someone that was running an electronic-mechanical hybrid. The mechanical injection would start when the boost comes in. When the boost came in the duty cycle on the electric would be somewhere in the 90-100% range and when things balanced it would be back down to where it was before it came in.

 

There are applications out there that run coil near plug, under ECU control, 110+ psig boost, single plug, methanol, inductive, just fine.

It all boils down to the details. There's a lot of things that tend to be overlooked or screwed up right from the start, that can cause grief.

By the way, coil on plug is a different game than coil near plug. I would agree that "coil on plug" due to the inherent limitations, is not a good route to go. Most of what would be discussed here is coil near plug stuff.

 

Yup, the carb deal allows for earlier vaporization of the fuel and densification of the inlet air, versus standard EFI injection down toward the valve. Pro stock old vs new is a classic example.

Now if NHRA would allow direct injection (GDI) that would be a whole other story to discuss. IMHO I think NHRA should have skipped port injection and gone to direct injection for Pro Stock, but that's only me.

Direct injection for blown/screw alcohol is simply not possible at this point in time given what is available hardware wise. A hybrid direct/port deal could be possible, but by my calc's not worth the effort and hassle. Maybe one day direct might become possible?

Rob, back to your points, using an ECU to control MFI delivery devices is not going to net any appreciable gains over pure MFI and Grid/Mag control.

That's where the departure needs to happen in order for people to move forward......

 

I would be fine running regular mechanical above the blower and a standard electronic injector below the blower. I think a lot of the blower deals are using a log with the injector in it and running from that to a MFI nozzle, which I agree is probably less than ideal situation. On the other hand I think there is so much cross flow and reversion going on within the manifold that the spray angle doesn’t really much matter. I know on some of the nitro stuff they face the nozzle back up towards the manifold to help atomization time. I’d like to try that on an alky engine but I worry about it making it into the manifold and getting grabbed by another cylinder, making that cylinder run lean. Maybe on the next system I start from scratch I’ll try it and see if it nets anything over a traditional deal.

 

Yeah, hat fuel can be batch. Port fuel needs to be sequential, down near the inlet valve, phased to either a SOI target or a EOI target. Direct in cylinder injection would be cool, but there is no hardware at this time to accomplish that.

The future is bright. It just won't be an ECU controlling/feeding old MFI hardware. It will be much different.

 

Mike I think you mean Manzo he he

 

The only reason EFI hasn't put the dinosaurs to sleep is because there are so few tuners that are capable of working at this level.
There are still some people that think a flathead ford is wonderful and still make HP parts for them.
Just because the current performers aren't grasping it doesn't mean it is not better in the end. 9 out of 10 NOS and 10/10 turbo cars are EFI.

 

And look at the recent record run by the E Kanoo gang. They have some pretty bright minds on staff. Like I said before, the future is bright for ECU control.