Muddling thru the various stages of drivability of a Pro Street build, cold engine starts seem a little daunting(November-thru March when the urge beckons to start the beast for a cruise. The builder has no thought about running the carb with any means for a choke. As our area does not receive any snow and the average low day time temperature is above 50, he does not see a real problem: just more warm-up.The builder states the BB Chev 496 will easily make 600 HP gross and over 500 foot pounds of torque. It will be hooked up to a 400 turbo trans and a 9" Ford rear with 4.30's.


I figured I'd give his set-up a go and if it doesn't fit in the scheme, I'll change it. I've watched a couple of videos on a few EFI's that appear to be pretty simple to install (just time and think thru): initially programmed thru chosen parameters and the unit fine tunes itself as the car is driven.
As a side benefit, this would be a good application for altitude adjustment when the circumstances warrants.


I feel there are all sorts of readers up and down the spectrum that are using an EFI and would like their input about their units.


Thank you

 

"I feel there are all sorts of readers up and down the spectrum that are using an EFI and would like their input about their units."


Well. it seems that this quote on my post of the above is not such a shoe-in as I had anticipated. I can now assume that there is no cross-overs if the ride was already carbureted and saw no desire to EFI their rides. I can suspect that the initial cost throws up a red flag especially if the injectors are railed down each side if the intake manifold.


I just started some heavy research on the carb style units. The EZ-EFI 2.0 looked real good but the number of negative reviews posted since late last year has really cooked its standing: poor installation guide, very poor customer support and delivered software that is obsolete before the units were shipped. It appears it was pushed out the door before this enhanced unit was perfected and the real world use showed how bad it is.

 

I honestly don't know anyone locally who's using aftermarket EFI on their hotrod. I certainly have looked at them, and considered them, but as you mentioned, I can't handle the price tag associated with them. Especially considering most of these cars are not daily drivers, and rarely get driven in the coldest, wettest winter months. I doubt very few pro street cars see snow driving.
My interest in EFI was in replacing my dual carbs on my tunnel rammed engine, and getting good all around performance, plus drivability. After seeing the price tag for a FAST EFI I decided the cost was so high I could tinker and spend a lot of money on carbs, and not reach half the price of a dual EFI setup.

 

Once you get the carb down and how to adjust properly I don't think EFI is really worth the money. Living in Colorado and often going up and down a couple thousand feet, I have thought about one of the TB units like the EZ or the Holley but like you I can't justify the money for a car thats not daily driven. Plus with these units you really need to update the fuel system and sometimes run a return line to the tank. Just more stuff to mess up haha.

 

NO!!!! i dont care what you can do any efi kit is crap. let me explain after building cars for all budgets i have come to hate anything holley and the self tuning efi kits all lean out the engine and kill the rings if its not a close to stock setup for "economy". remember gm spent billions developing the efi we have now all aftermarket just started to develop it. on the set up you have i would find a 97-00 c/k2500 with a big block and steal all the injection setup for your car (im assuming you know of the tank modifications required for any fi set up) and utilizing the factory computer adjust from there. if that much wiring is not your sort of game we could go with a tbi set up (bolts in place of a carb) off of a 89-95 and they have a very simple plug and play with a removeable prom in the computer to send to the tuners (i like sinister performance) just email them your engine specs and what you want and they custom tune it and remove unwanted crap like the vss sensor or widen the o2 levels to run the way you want. lastly to look int a lot of budget friendly efi options check out the local 4wd shop they have been doing this for years so they have a lot of different ways to get efi in them

 

This is just an opinion. The biggest factor in a EFI conversion is the person and what they what out of the car and what you are willing to put into it. Like every other part of the build the first question is what do I want out of it. Do you care if its like what other people have or to I want something different. Not following a beaten path requires a much greater knowledge depth or much deeper pockets. If your goal is just build a great engine then find someone on the net that has done what you want in a build thread follow a long and use that thread as a guide so you do not have to relearn everything he did.

Also for pro street I think you want to rethink the Chevy BB/ turbo 400. that is very out dated tech and VERY heavy if you want the car to handle. A modern LS3 or its cast iron Lq4 brother have as much or more potential and weights less than a BB. back that up with a 4L80e transmission. You really want 4 gears with a pro street.

Self taught system will never be as good as a dyno tuned engine. Even the pre tuned carbs like the Holley street avenger are not as good as a dyno tuned carb setup. There is simple too many factor and too many option when dyno tuning either a carb or a EFI system but the EFI system has a LOT more ways to give an engine what it wants at a given throttle position under load. We have some local guys that dyno tune GM stuff. They can use the factory PCM or a very low dollar Mega Squirt system. They can handle everything from a budget junk yard 4.8 conversion into a C3 Vette costing less then a grand to Turbo 6.0 at 800 plus HP.

Keep it easy and local (no research)
In the old days the best way for a non-pro to build an engine was for you to find an engine builder and follow his direction. Now to build a EFI car find a EFI dyno tuner first explain what you want and get his local recommendation. Car shows are the best place to track down who's the best. It could be a guy with a pole barn in his back yard. That can be hard to find if your not in the loop.

In all fairness to the FAST system, I have a friend who did a high end build of a BB. He went too big for the street so about 3 years later he got a smaller cam and did the FAST conversion or I should say he paid to have it done. He was not happy for the first 300-400 miles. He said it was getting better. After about 1000 miles he liked it. Now with about 8k on it he loves it.

EDIT: My bad i read this wrong. I was thinking Pro tour.

 

The real key to any EFI choice is doing a lot of research prior to making a purchase. Hate to step on any toes, but if someone hates every product a certain maker sells, then I'd take their opinion of that maker's products with caution. It would be hard to be unbiased if you've got it in for a certain maker.
Look around the internet and see what people are saying about the systems they've purchased. Make sure whoever gives an opinion has not only used the system they recommend (or don't recommend) but have used it long enough to either work out the bugs, or finally given up after a good try to work out bugs, like what Gorn described for his friend's FAST system. Some of these systems take a long time to work out, and seem to get better and better with time.