Lean burn to GM TBI/Microsquirt conversion

R.W.Dale

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Slight progress

I ran the wire for the fuel pump along the drivers side brake lines and back to the center of the car where I hope the fuel pump will live. FYI 15 feet of 14ga wire is barely enough to reach. It’s all tucked safely into loom and zip tied every few inches.

the starter relay has a handy unused “batt” pin that got requisitioned into a power supply for the fuel pump. Surely it can give up 10more amps

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The battery is an unmitigated disaster. How this car starts through such corroded leads and a petrified what looks like a tiny #6 ground is beyond me. This will get addressed

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I’m starting to feel out where what circuits will exit the harness. I think the microsquirt will live in the general vicinity of where I will delete the charcoal canister




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Gearhed

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Looks better than my current battery situation. It's got those terrible wire-clamp-style terminals as well, on a group 65 ford battery that someone shoehorned in there, with about 6 extra positive wires that idk what they do, and a piece of 2/0 battery cable making a chassis ground to a fender bolt. It's sketchy as hell, and will be getting redone
 

R.W.Dale

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Apparently making fun of the ....ahem...battery cable size was enough to incur the wrath of the mopar gods. Much beating on the battery terminals was needed to start the car in order to leave work.

then to top it off fuel economy has actually been dropping with the warmer weather and the carb has been exhibiting some all to carb like stumbling and surging. So the time has come.

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R.W.Dale

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What some terrible carb bolt access. Jeez.

anyway can confirm the adapt 0 plate marketed to the 258 jeep people will fit with the removal of the EGR valve.

my throttle lever mod to the TBI unit is going to work. It may be uglier than a mud fence but when I decided to make a bracket I literally looked down on the shop floor underneath my bench and was like “hey that might work” and sure enough it will. The distance to some pre measured points works on exactly like the original carb as far as the trans TV stud. Everything is still in line quite well. There is some more vertical offset but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to create any issues

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R.W.Dale

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Fuel pump is installed and the lines are all routed. Well almost...I need to add a P clamp to a couple places and I still need to replace the lines behind the front fender. All in all this part was pretty easy and I was dreading it the most. No fuel spillage no tank dropping.

yes that’s a large ground wire. Can’t have too much ground. Also my favorite inline fuel pump mount. A conduit hanger.

the airtex E2000 pump I’m using has 5/16 quick connect lines on both ends. If you place the end of your EFI hose in boiling water you absolutely can shove it over the retaining ring for the quick connector fitting. It will NEVER come back off without cutting.
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To satisfy my curiosity I looped the lines together at the front of the car with a pressure gauge and ran the pump. There was a negligible pressure buildup probably just from hydraulic drag and pumping the fuel back uphill with the car ass high on jackstands. This tells me the stock feed and return lines are not a significant restriction to fuel flow.
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R.W.Dale

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The throttle linkage is going to work fine the distances are identical to before for the transmission linkage and throttle I was even able to retain the lost motion link for the cruise control.

With the exception of a few key minor parts I should have ordered a week ago I will probably finish up this swap tomorrow

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R.W.Dale

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I got ambitious and started her up for the first time. In a few minutes of tuning I had it starting and idling decent after an hour or so of messing with the tune in tunerstudio. It dies immediately when I drop it in gear but I had also gotten lazy and hadn’t actually set the distributor up yet. I just played with the trigger offset until it started

I’ve now moved onto the ignition setup and phasing. Basically it’s the relationship between the rotor, the pin on the cap and the reluctor

basically I need the rotor to align with the pin on the cap at 25 degrees. This means it’s still somewhat pointed at said pin 10 degrees either side of 25 so it doesn’t crossfire or have a weak spark at the advance extremes

pictured is the rotor at 10 degrees BTDC as you can see it’s right on the trailing edge of the rotor.
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R.W.Dale

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I will need to get the reluctor to line up with the pickup at 10 degrees. To do this I have a part coming that should let me make this happen

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As you can see it doesn’t line up now.


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R.W.Dale

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Something isn’t right. The timing is moving around all over the place even with the ignition fixed in tuner studio and the engine will not run with the timing mark anything near what the timin tab says is appropriate

I’ve got a ton of slack between the crankshaft and the rotor moving either direction. The car starts hard warm just like it did before and stumbles for a couple seconds after starting and is super easy to flood.

I think I need to replace the timing set.

if I ignore the timing marks and time by ear I can get the thing sounding pretty strong in the driveway


Oh and get this. The new rotor and cap apparently impacted each other somehow and filled the dizzy full of brass shavings. Made for some massive misfiring that took me a little bit to diagnose

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Ele115

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You may find all of the nylon timing sprocket teeth in the bottom of the timing cover
 

R.W.Dale

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You may find all of the nylon timing sprocket teeth in the bottom of the timing cover

well it wasn’t missing any teeth but it was pretty stretched and probably had 4 or 5 degrees of slack

it definitely wasn’t long for this world
 

R.W.Dale

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While I have the front of the engine apart waiting on rockauto I decided that I’d be a fool to not make a crank position sensor setup. I did get the car running with the basic trigger in the distributor but the hard starting and wandering timing bug me. I don’t think all this was attributed to the loose timing chain. I’m just not super confident in the 7 pin HEI module in bypass mode.

So I called in a favor from a co worker with a plasma table and had him burn me a 36 tooth trigger wheel. As best I could I mocked up the front of the engine and whipped up the basics of a CPS mount using a junkyard Ford ranger 3.0 sensor.

this accomplishes two things. Much much more accurate timing and I will have the ability to go distributorless wasted spark coil packs later.
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Duke5A

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LMAO, I love this! Who needs fancy aftermarket parts to setup a modern fuel/spark system? This is one of the coolest threads I've seen.
 

BudW

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Sigh, loose timing chains can cause all sorts of issues. The only reason Chrysler used the plastic timing chains is because they were cheaper and quieter - but man, do they wear out fast. Even double roller timing chains will stretch in time - but no where near what the plastic ones do.

On Chrysler Industrial (and some marine) engines, there is no timing chain - only two counter-rotating gears (the original gear drive) meshed together. The only problem with them is the camshaft lobes are way different (camshaft rotates the opposite direction). The gear on camshaft and oil pump drive are also different, so the oil pump and distributor rotate in the correct direction. One nice thing about them is the timing is always on the dime (not jumping around). The bad news is no one makes performance camshafts (or any camshafts) for them. I would venture to say that no one here has even heard of this before.
This is a big block timing gear set for an industrial engine:
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The only other option is an aftermarket design:
Gear Drive.jpg

but not sure how these will last long term (without a constant oil flow to the needle bearings).

I REALLY like this design - but things are, well. very open and the timing belts have to be replaced every 25-30k miles. Also, these are VERY expensive:
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Small block vs. Big block.

What is the best solution to keep timing in check. I'm still working on that one.
I guess if I had the money and don't mind changing belts every so often, the Jesel system but man, $2500 (for two sets) is hard to justify.

BudW
 

Mikes5thAve

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Most people are adding in the tensioner now when they do the chain to keep the timing steady. When I did mine I asked about it at forums and was told not to that it only benefited certain applications. Then that advice changed and every one was doing it. The only thing I didn't like was the thought of the chain always dragging on the nylon pad.

It seems like every car manufacturer I've had used timing chains with the plastic teeth and same wear problem. They usually claim it was to quiet the chain but I never heard anything with a new chain any way.

The gear drives do make a cool sound when they run.
 

R.W.Dale

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There is certainly many ways to skin this cat. But realistically with a 100k mile 318 the cloyes double roller timing set I ordered will absolutely outlast what life the engine has left in it.

Oldsmobile did the same thing with nylon sprockets and experienced the same issues on the 307 after the miles built up.
 

R.W.Dale

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Finally back to work on the car. I cannot complain though I spent the weekend on a gambler 500 beating on another mopar this time an 02 3500 van

I failed to account for part of the power steering bracket occupying the same space as the bracket and bolts for the CPS. No biggie I just recombobulated it to run on the outer pulley groove once used by the late AIR pump.

after this the dizzy will do nothing but send the spark from the coil to the correct cylinder.
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BudW

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Clever work!

after this the dizzy will do nothing but send the spark from the coil to the correct cylinder.
And keep the oil pump driveshaft in its proper location. Without the distributor in place, the shaft will walk up to the point it will no longer turn the oil pump.

I have seen people remove the distributor (for other repairs), re-stab it but fail to put the clamp back on or worse, leave it loose, the bolt comes loose and falls off along with the clamp, and all of the sudden, the car dies (after running bad for a spell).
BudW
 

R.W.Dale

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Good point.

anyway after piecing everything together and a bunch of false cranks while I fiddled with some tuner studio parameters I got the engine to start and run. Be it the crank trigger or the timing chain that wandering base timing is now gone. With the ignition timing locked in tuner studio the timing is rock steady.

the idle seems much much stronger now too.
 

R.W.Dale

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The installation is essentially done. Well with the exception of doing something about the cheesiest air cleaner known to man. At some point I’ll try to find a 4bbl air cleaner assembly. I also have a little noise from something related to the CPS clicking or dragging on something. Honestly I’ll probably just let it self clearance

I’ve gone on a couple short drives. The tuning has a LONG way to go but the car already runs and idles much smoother and seems a lot more eager to get around

my stupid radiator is starting to leak and naturally anything new for a fifth Ave is on intergalactic backorder

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