Fuel Dilution - DI Engines

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by StevieC
I was talking about 1980's injection, I'm not sure the spraybar was still in use then or at least those vehicles died before I got to see them in the late 1980's early 90's I do remember the Holley carbs on the 1980's Chryslers that the Bosch TBI replaced.

Yes I should have excluded Ford's injection. It was a pretty good system. My apologies. 30 almost 40 years ago... I remember a ton of port injected GM's having mega issues.

I BELIEVE the Spraybar TBI was used up through '83 when Imperial production ceased? That seems to be what Allpar states. Yes, I think, as I noted in my reply to Randy Savage's nemesis, that GM was spinning too many plates with their injection setups. I believe TPI was reasonably good? Most of my experience is with their anemic 305 TBI offerings and of course the "injection" spider system was another weird variant they had going on.

 

[StevieC]

Ok it's possible that they were all "converted" by then before I saw it. I had thought that they just scrapped the idea and went back to carbs or it had been to another shop and had been converted already by the time I saw it.

Spider injection was the stupidest idea and I think that engineer should be taken out to pasture. JUST WHY?

 

[y_p_w]

Originally Posted by CR94
Originally Posted by littlehulkster
Carbs do that, too. They also have the added benefit of only starting when they want to, and requiring constant maintenance and tuning to get them running, with even more to get them running anything close to well. ...
Maybe in your very limited experience. Cars and trucks and school buses reliably started and went to work every day with reasonably set up carburetors.

I remember those days. A "tuneup" every 10,000 miles, and possibly sooner if the adjustment either went out of had to be changed for the conditions. There used to be a brisk business in spray carb cleaner, and I heard winter storage of certain cars could be a pain because of gummed up carbs.

However, back then my parents knew a retired mechanic who did work out of his home for cheap. He didn't really need the money but still loved working on cars in his retirement. He was doing this up until the 80s, so I'm not sure how he would have adjusted to doing stuff like using code readers or replacing electronics.

 

[WhizkidTN]

Originally Posted by dave1251
Catch cans don't do a thing.


That's a whole other thread but I can tell you by personal experience that it has helped on my turbo Optima. After 76K miles (can was on since ~10K miles? - hard to remember), my intake valves were getting to the point where I would want to clean them but I couldn't seem to determine if the way they were was hurting me at all. With my new engine, she pulls as good as the old one. I believe that it slows the rate of build-up, at least on my car with the fuel/oil I run and my state of tune/bolt-on modifications and how I drive it (daily driver).
FWIW: I have a dual catch can system for my car and I'm able to drain about 1-2oz of gunk out per 4K OCI (more in winter).

 

[WhizkidTN]

Originally Posted by StevieC
Ok it's possible that they were all "converted" by then before I saw it. I had thought that they just scrapped the idea and went back to carbs or it had been to another shop and had been converted already by the time I saw it.

Spider injection was the stupidest idea and I think that engineer should be taken out to pasture. JUST WHY?


Agreed! Those "poppets" - grrr...

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted by StevieC
Originally Posted by CJWinWA

You must not have experienced an 81-83 fuel injected Chrysler Imperial, those were real gems indeed.


Absolute garbage. My dad did a lot of conversions on vehicles equipped with that system.

They rarely made it to taxi service, for good reason. Taxis generally weren't brand new vehicles, but something at least lightly used to take the hit of depreciation, which also had the happy side effect of weeding out some atrocious vehicles. I can only think of one of them that made it to taxi service in this city in the day.

 

[littlehulkster]

Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by Jimmy_Russells
I find the discussion on this board about fuel dilution and LSPI to be fascinating. I have driven DI VAG products now since 2007 and I am on car forums every day, and I have never heard anything about either of these issues until I signed up here. Either I am quite ignorant or these problems are way blown out of proportion.


BITOG tends to blow everything out of proportion

It is an issue, given the new SN+ standard is specifically designed to help prevent it, but yeah I don't see it as some huge, inescapable plague like people on car forums are making it out to be.

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by littlehulkster

And no, lots of other companies made reliable fuel injection systems in the early 80s. Chrysler wasn't one of them. Not much of a surprise there.


Early 80's? Most were using carburetors still and when they did implement fuel injection, there were a host of different designs even among the same manufacturer. While Ford hit it out of the park with their SEFI setup (Bosch/Intel), GM's TBI was a glorified carburetor with a couple of fuel injectors slapped in the top. Ford's CFI was no better. GM then had their "spider" setup, which was a gong show and had something like 3x or 4x different injection systems going on simultaneously with TPI, SEFI, TBI and the Spider setup.

Honda was still using carburetors while simultaneously producing their somewhat odd fuel injection setup: PGM FI.

With respect to Chrysler, their multiport system found on cars like the Daytona, wasn't any worse than anybody else's. Of course the Imperial being discussed didn't have that system, it had something more akin to Ford's CFI or GM's TBI, basically a glorified carb with injection melded to it and the results were predictably crap.

I'm not sure what all the little Hulkamaniacs thought of all this at the time but they probably weren't trying to push a brand-bash masquerading as a legitimate technical discussion

Carbs stayed around in the cheap cars for quite a while, yes, but higher level cars at the time had mostly moved to FI and very few gave any real trouble. Even then, there were exceptions in some cheap cars. Toyota started selling the FI 22RE in their pickups in 84, and that engine is legendarily reliable. They also had an optional FI engine in the Celica which was pretty excellent really. The Euros ran it starting in the 70s and didn't have much trouble. The Imperial was not a cheap car, and Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up.

But then, "Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up" is a pretty concise history of the company.

 

[Railrust]

Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by Railrust
Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by JohnnyJohnson
When are they going to design FI that isn't CXXP?



The Corvette has had direct injection since 2014 and I haven't seen anyone on Corvette Forum reporting major carbon buildup issues at all. (or serious amounts of fuel dilution either)

And I don't think there have been too many problems with Mazda's direct injected engines either.

Those people also don't drive their cars, their vehicles are sitting in their garages with $200 worth of the latest and greatest wax on their paint. Happy as clams. And some of these guys, despite not driving their vettes, have installed catch cans and change their oil every 3,000 miles using the very best oil they can get their hands on. They're show cars...weekend warriors to the ice cream stand to show off. Meanwhile on the Chevy Silverado forums there's guys pulling their intakes off trying to clean these things...loaded.


A lot of Corvette guys don't pile on the miles, that's true, but there are quite a few on the forum over 100,000 miles now and there is one person on one of the Facebook pages with over 260,000 miles on his. And I have yet to see a single picture of anyone's engine that looks severely gunked up (by contrast if you look on the Subaru WRX forums you'll find plenty of severely carboned up intake valve pictures on very low mileage cars)


I understand some people do drive them but I've yet to see one of the newer ones - the direct injected vettes - with much mileage on them. I have no doubt the older vettes (pre direct injection) will not have carbon buildup on the valves, but direct injected corvettes? Why not? What did they do that prevents it? I understand they are top of the line cars, but without adding port injection to their engines, all with the direct injection system, I don't see how they could prevent it. Better PCV valve systems? Better ring development to prevent blowbye? Or a catch can?

I'd run some CRC valve cleaner through my intake every 5,000 miles if I had a newer vette...just because I'm anal and I once owned a vette.

 

[y_p_w]

I remember in the 80's as a teenager seeing a few Corvettes that had a prominent label that said "Crossfire injection" whatever that was. Those were in the Vettes up to I think the 1981 model.

 

[Tahoe4Life]

Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by JohnnyJohnson
When are they going to design FI that isn't CXXP?



The Corvette has had direct injection since 2014 and I haven't seen anyone on Corvette Forum reporting major carbon buildup issues at all. (or serious amounts of fuel dilution either)



Since 2015 the Tahoe,Yukon and Escalade [5.3&6.2] has had direct injection. Have not seen anyone on the any of the Tahoe-Yukon or Escalade forums reporting major carbon buildup either...or serious fuel dilution issues. A lot of those have way over 100K miles.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by littlehulkster


But then, "Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up" is a pretty concise history of the company.


One could say the same about GM. Chrysler doesn't have a monopoly on turning what should have been an easy success into a failure. Realistically, all marques have had their boondoggles, perhaps Chrysler has had a few more of them than others, but they've certainly had their successes as well.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by y_p_w
I remember in the 80's as a teenager seeing a few Corvettes that had a prominent label that said "Crossfire injection" whatever that was. Those were in the Vettes up to I think the 1981 model.


Oh yeah, forgot about that one! So that's fuel injection system #5!
- TBI
- TPI
- SEFI
- Spider
- Crossfire

In comparison, I believe Ford had two: CFI, which was almost stillborn (EEC-III), and EEC-IV, which was available in SEFI and batch-fire.

 

[littlehulkster]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by littlehulkster


But then, "Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up" is a pretty concise history of the company.


One could say the same about GM. Chrysler doesn't have a monopoly on turning what should have been an easy success into a failure. Realistically, all marques have had their boondoggles, perhaps Chrysler has had a few more of them than others, but they've certainly had their successes as well.


One could indeed say the same about GM. However, Chrysler has gone broke twice, which is not something any of it's American competition can boast. There's probably a good reason for that, too.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by littlehulkster
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by littlehulkster


But then, "Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up" is a pretty concise history of the company.


One could say the same about GM. Chrysler doesn't have a monopoly on turning what should have been an easy success into a failure. Realistically, all marques have had their boondoggles, perhaps Chrysler has had a few more of them than others, but they've certainly had their successes as well.


One could indeed say the same about GM. However, Chrysler has gone broke twice, which is not something any of it's American competition can boast. There's probably a good reason for that, too.


Well GM's done it once

Chrysler was at least salvaged by Fiat, another automaker, once it went [censored]-up, GM ended up belonging to the government and the union and a ton of people were screwed in the process. While one could argue the fallout from the Mercedes merger and subsequent dissolution was what left Chrysler vulnerable to failure when the crash hit, it doesn't change the fact that it happened. It was however, a more reasonable outcome, the procurement by Fiat, than what transpired with GM.

 

[Patman]

Originally Posted by Railrust



I understand some people do drive them but I've yet to see one of the newer ones - the direct injected vettes - with much mileage on them. I have no doubt the older vettes (pre direct injection) will not have carbon buildup on the valves, but direct injected corvettes? Why not? What did they do that prevents it? I understand they are top of the line cars, but without adding port injection to their engines, all with the direct injection system, I don't see how they could prevent it. Better PCV valve systems? Better ring development to prevent blowbye? Or a catch can?




No catch can, they simply designed the system properly, with a properly working PCV system and supposedly the camshaft profile helps as well (don't ask me to explain it technically, I am just going by what I've read on the forums)

There are a few with high mileage on them with no issues, even though you might not have seen them yet, they are out there.

 

[Patman]

Originally Posted by y_p_w
I remember in the 80's as a teenager seeing a few Corvettes that had a prominent label that said "Crossfire injection" whatever that was. Those were in the Vettes up to I think the 1981 model.


They only came in the 1982 and 1984 Corvettes. My first Corvette was an 84 and that Crossfire system got the nickname "ceasefire" for a reason, it was not the best attempt at fuel injection. It caused the engine to run roughly.

 

[littlehulkster]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by littlehulkster
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by littlehulkster


But then, "Chrysler really had no excuse to mess it up" is a pretty concise history of the company.


One could say the same about GM. Chrysler doesn't have a monopoly on turning what should have been an easy success into a failure. Realistically, all marques have had their boondoggles, perhaps Chrysler has had a few more of them than others, but they've certainly had their successes as well.


One could indeed say the same about GM. However, Chrysler has gone broke twice, which is not something any of it's American competition can boast. There's probably a good reason for that, too.


Well GM's done it once

Chrysler was at least salvaged by Fiat, another automaker, once it went [censored]-up, GM ended up belonging to the government and the union and a ton of people were screwed in the process. While one could argue the fallout from the Mercedes merger and subsequent dissolution was what left Chrysler vulnerable to failure when the crash hit, it doesn't change the fact that it happened. It was however, a more reasonable outcome, the procurement by Fiat, than what transpired with GM.


Well, that and their products sucked. The first time they were downright awful, and the second, mostly forgettable. Outside of some monstrous gas guzling SUVs that were getting slaughtered by the high fuel prices, Chrysler basically had nothing worth buying at that time. This is a company that tried to sell Sebrings with a straight face. A car company won't go broke if people want to buy their cars, after all.

When it comes to Fiat-Chrysler, well, let's give it a while and see how many are in the junkyards after the warranty runs out.

 

[MCompact]

Originally Posted by StevieC
I was never a fan of Rochester carbs until later on as they seemed far less reliable compared to Holley and I know this might start a war but it's just personal observation.
I do like the Quad Jet though... Properly setup it's a gem.


I still get called on to rebuild a Q-Jet every few years. They were incredibly sophisticated and could be set up to work on almost any car. The downside was that you needed access to data about the various metering rods, jets, and power piston springs in order to dial one in to a very fine degree. The Q-Jet got a bad rap because most people didn't want to take the time to understand how it worked.

 

[Brigadier]

Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
Originally Posted by Brigadier
Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
Use top-tier fuel and no need for 93 octane, if acceleration doesn't ping or engine run a-foul. Change oil often and the Pennzoil Platinum claims to clean the engine best.

I plan on 5K OCIs.- SN Plus Dexos1/Gen2 oil - top tier 87 octane fuels (no ethanol) and hopefully no problems surface.


Just for clarification, Top Tier and ethanol free are totally unrelated.

Just for clarification, I already know that. For additional clarification, gasoline is more pure WITHOUT ethanol and many cases exist where ethanol has created engine misfires and engine damage.

So yes, it's very relevant in my post above. But of you like ethanol in your gas, go for it.



Seriously? Have you read my signature? Good grief.

 

[y_p_w]

Originally Posted by Patman
Originally Posted by y_p_w
I remember in the 80's as a teenager seeing a few Corvettes that had a prominent label that said "Crossfire injection" whatever that was. Those were in the Vettes up to I think the 1981 model.


They only came in the 1982 and 1984 Corvettes. My first Corvette was an 84 and that Crossfire system got the nickname "ceasefire" for a reason, it was not the best attempt at fuel injection. It caused the engine to run roughly.

So the last of one generation and the first of the next. I remember the new Vette being featured as Face's car on The A-Team. Apparently that car was sold after they stopped using that car.

https://bringatrailer.com/2011/06/29/dust-col-decker-1984-a-team-chevrolet-corvette/

I looked up what it did. I guess two throttle bodies with two air filters, with each one feeding half of the engine. I guess 1982 used round air filters, while 1984 used these odd-shaped filters.