Hi all, Wondering if anyone has tried to have the intake cut and the injectors welded in at a local shop, assuming of course I provided a set of drawings and technical requirements for where to drill and weld the injector bosses. I have seen this done on an Olds 455, but locally in a home garage. I was looking at Force-EFI but the cost is way up there when I convert to US dollars, I need a Canadian shop I'm afraid... ...any advice?
If you're going to try to save some $$ by machining it yourself, don't forget that you will still have to buy several items that are included in their price: - Fuel Pump - Injectors - Bungs - Fuel rails - Fuel regulator - Throttle Body I think you'll find that the machining is only a small part of the cost. Even if you could save $100 by having someone local machine it, the extra $100 might very well be worth it because of: - System Engineering - Experience - Tuning assistance after the installation Just my $0.02. I think Kerry S. did the work to his own manifold, maybe he can give some insight. -Bob Cunningham bobc@gnttype.org
I did my own; there are pictures of it at the link in my signature. If you've got access to a good drill press and someone who can TIG weld, it's not too bad. You can get the bungs & rail stock from PT&E, Kinsler, and others. I visually aligned the bungs to the center of the ports, then scribed the parallel line to locate the plane that lines them up. I drilled the holes in a drill press, using a bit sized so that the bungs just slipped in. I did mine vertically; if you want to lean them over in either plane to target the ports better you'll require some sort of jig to align everything. I scratched my head for a while wondering how to hold the bungs for welding..I ended up marking the fuel rail, drilling it for the injectors, and inserting scrap injectors into the rail and bungs. I then clamped this whole mess down and proceeded to weld the bungs. Even with this method, I ended up with a couple that were slightly off and since I had access to a mill, I milled the tops to even them up. Since I did mine, I saw somebody else's site where they made wooden dowels sized to press into the bungs, then made a wooden rail on both sides and cross pieces that bolted to the carb flange. I like that idea and it'd probably work better with less fuss. After you've got the bungs in and the rail drilled, you need to fabricate rail hold downs; I made 2 small diagonals per side that are tapped for a bolt through the bottom of the rail and welded them to the front and rear runner. For a throttle body, you have several options: I'm building a twin turbo S2 V6 so I went with an elbow PT&E sells that allows mounting a 90mm Ford TB. This is convenient for me since it's round and aimed toward the front. You can buy a 4 bbl throttle body. The cheapest thing would be to use a 4 bbl carb baseplate, and put a carb spacer on top of it for a smooth entrance to the baseplate. I saw this in a lowbuck EFI article in some (gasp) Mopar mag. Good luck whatever you decide...I had fun doing mine.
...as it turns out Force is quite willing to supply the compoentns and let you machine/weld everything yourself! That's about a $1200 savings from my point of view. Besides, I'd rather have all the fun making it. Kendall, had a look over your site, thanks for the tips! What did you do for weling up the injector bosses?
I like the suggestion about making wooden dowels to help mock up the bosses to hold while welding! Sounds like a clever idea.:TU:
