ENGINE ACCESSORIES

FIRE & AIR WHERE IT COUNTS

To make power, an engine must breathe, so way down deep, I installed an Engle 120 cam, that's designed to produce maximum power between about 3000 & 5500 rpm.  Perfect for my needs.  Performance VW's need dual carburettors, and that means constant fooling with them.  After driving my turbo Saab for 8 yrs, I was quite familiar with fuel injection, and had come to appreciate the ease of maintenance, and simplicity of operation under all conditions, so that's what I decided on for Vamoose.  SWAG aeromotive in Tucson, AZ, advertised Geo Metro F.I. for airplanes, on a do-it-yourself basis, so I ordered his book - for $50.00.

After consulting with a friend, who is a top local mechanic, we decided that some of Swag's instructions were a little vague, and assumed a lot more skill than this beginner possessed.  Re-programming the CPU sounded like a can of worms, too.  More research led me to Simple Digital Systems, in Alberta, Canada.  ( www.sdsefi.com )  Their EM3-4F system sounded like what the doctor ordered, so order it, I did.  Quite ( very ) expensive, but when it arrived, the buyer's remorse disappeared.  What a beautifully laid out & built system.  GM snap together connectors are used, and assembly is a no-brainer.  The whole thing is pre-wired to my specs.........beautiful ! ! !

Building an intake system by hand looked like an awful chore, so I went and found a type 3 VW  fuel injection intake at a junkyard - for free - cleaned it up and painted it, and had a better system than I could make.  Two problems.......1.  Throttle area was very small, and restrictive, in my eyes, and  2.  the throttle position sensor wouldn't match up with my later model components from SDS.  A friend who owns "ForePlay Racing" in Southern California machined off the nose of the throttle body, made and welded on an adapter, and we installed a 2.3L Ford Tempo throttle body.  Now, the wiring is correct, and look at the difference in size.  This thing will BREATHE ! ! !

But.....of course.....nothing's ever as simple as  we'd like, and this was no exception.  Seems like everything I do turns into a struggle.  Came to find that the old Bosch injectors, and the new GM injectors have different ends, and while the new ones could  be made to work, it was pretty shaky.  Fortunately, I found that my handy step drill had a step of just the right size, so took it to a local machine shop, run by a VW mechanic, and he put it on the valve guide reaming machine.  Then, found that the injector bores weren't parallel.........the tops are tipped slighty together, so had to allow for that.  Sheeesh ! ! !  The tops are different, too, so had to build new fuel rails.

The local metal re-cycling yard happened to have a piece of scrap of just the right size and shape for my needs, so grabbed it, and got to sawing, filing, and drilling.  Rather than go thru the valve guide machine effort again, on  these little pieces, I used the original Bosch hold-downs to give the proper angle to accept the injectors, and put my drill press to work.  Before trying it on the metal ones, I sawed some blanks out of a block of nylon, that I've lugged around for years, for just this purpose.  Ha ! ! !  Junk IS useful......sometimes.  The rail moved a little too much when installed, and I feared for the O-rings, so a piece of tubing pushed down over 1 hold down bolt snugged things up nicely.

Of course, the bolts are drilled for safety wire, as is everything on the engine that can't use a lock nut.  Don't want any of that stuff going thru that precious prop.  Then, too, there was the problem of which bolts to use where.  VW's are metric, aircraft are SAE, and the 2 don't mix.  I finally decided ( duh ) on this.........everything that attaches to the motor mount will be metric.  Everything below, including the bolts that hold the mount to the frame, will be SAE, and mostly AN spec.  For the most part, this has worked out well, although things like the fuel and oil line fittings are tapered, and flared fittings.  It just wasn't practical, or necessary to go thru the hassle of trying to find those in metric.

.