My long-term goal is to get good enough gas mileage out of my '67 'vert that I could justify using it as a daily driver. I bought an AOD that I will install this fall. Now I'm looking at fuel injection.

I'm looking at two options. Edelbrock makes kit #35210 that includes an intake manifold, distrubutor, fuel pump, throttle body fuel injector and everything needed to wire it up and program it. Holley makes #950-23S that is a throttle body fuel injector that bolts up to any 4V manifold. I also includes a fuel pump and all the wireing and software. I'd have to buy a distributor if I went with the Holley. The Edelbrock cost about double what the Holley does.

Does anyone have any experience with either of these?

 

One of the guys I used to work with runs the Edelbrock kit on his '65. He loves it. It's all pretty much plug and play, and it comes with a computer so you don't need to keep your laptop in the car.

That said, both are speed-density, so any significant mods will require calling the mfg and having them burn you another chip for your configuration. A mass-air system will adapt itself much better to a non-stock motor.

You might consider looking at James W's factory mass-air conversion pages. It would certainly be cheaper, if not as easy.

As a side note: you do realize that it would take a lifetime of gas savings to make up for all the money you're going to put into the car to make it fuel efficient, right? I daily drive my '67 and I get about 11-13mpg avg. The end goal is a little more than that, but there are more reasons to get a tranny with an OD gear than simply to increase fuel mileage

 

Sounds like you're recommending that I go with the AOD conversion and forget about the EFI conversion. You have a point about money spent vs fuel saved.

 

I was actually referring to the fact that running an OD tranny allows you to run a shorter rear gear ratio, improving performance without decreasing mileage and driveability on the freeway. That's my goal

I'm not against EFI conversions. I'd love to have EFI on my car. Not saying it's better or worse than a carburetor, both have their ups and downs. But EFI is much more maintenance-free and can result in better throttle response and increased mileage. I've got a '90 GT project car I'm going to turn into a daily driver/junker, and when I'm done with it I may very well snake the mass-air EFI from it and put it on my '67. I'm just saying that the cost of an EFI conversion is going to outweigh any fuel savings it results in. A properly tuned carb will still get decent mileage and will work fine for most people.

 

If you spent $1000 and went from 12mpg ($0.21/mi) to 18mpg ($0.14/mi) it would take 14,000 miles to break even with gas at $2.50/gal.

Of course, the easy starting, nice idling, easier to tune, longer-living, doesn't-dry-out-and-clog, automatically-adjusts-for-altitude nature of EFI is a nice advantage as well, especially for a DD. If you're afraid of computers and can't control a soldering iron, stay with carbs

And yeah, you can setup EFI for about $1k if you know what you're doing. I've got 3 EFI setups in my basement and I've paid about $400 total. One megasquirt, one holley TBI, one stock '92 mustang 5-speed. If I can ever get finished with suspension work and find a 302 that's worth using, I might actually make one of them work

 

If you pick up 6mpg with an EFI conversion, your carb isn't tuned properly.

 

That's where I'm currently at. I've got 3.70 gears in the rear end. At freeway speeds (I don't know the actual speed because the speedo is waaay off), I'm turning 3200 RPM. I guess I should do the transmission swap before I turn my attention to what I might want to do next.

Maybe what I really need is to find a good carb guy. It's probably running too rich. It runs really good when cold (never had that happen before), plus I see two black spots on the garage floor from where soot is coming out of the exhaust pipes. Probably carbon.

 

That's probably going to happen even when it's running right. The choke makes it run pig-rich until it warms up.

What kind of carb do you have? I'm sure we can help you tune it properly if you want to fiddle with it.

 

Holley 4V. I don't know which model or size.

 

Another step or so up the ladder is where you find laptop capability to reflash the ECM. At that point you have much improved tuning capabilities over all of the driveability functions (as opposed to perhaps just the basic fuel and ignition maps), and you never ever have to get a chip burned. I don't know if Megasquirt offers this capability; most of my experience centered around an Accel/DFI SuperRam multiport system (speed density) for a SBC.


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