EFI thread?

ghce

Well-Known Member
Would be really nice to see a thread on this, also some figures for economy and performance as well.
A few of the members on here are I know pursuing this, would be very good to get some progress reports.


Graeme
 
Yes definitely. There are a few threads about. It might be nice to gather all the resources in place too.

Almost everything you need to know is here (assuming the hotwire injection and not the earlier flapper or the later, more complex systems). This is one of the best write-up on almost any such project. In summary only the speed sensor issue is unresolved and this only switches between low and high speed idle. I'd be looking at an optical or hall effect trigger on the driveshaft.

http://www.conehead.org/Projects/LandRo ... i-2.15.pdf

More:

http://www.britishv8.org/articles/rover-14cux-efi.htm and http://www.britishv8.org/articles/rover ... re-efi.htm

As for this forum Geordie Jim's your man: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20731
Or "Daslandroverman": viewtopic.php?f=5&t=19681
 
In fact our resident GeordieJim went quiet on this despite an extremely impressive installation sadly. I reckon if its economy then wiring up the lambdas and running in feedback mode is going to be the deciding factor here. Trouble is 1-2mpg doesn't sound impressive but that is going to be up to 10% if realizable. I'm thinking "real world" town driving is going to see much bigger increases as percentages than cruising, carbs ae just to compromised and don't respond to this type of driving quickly enough. It would also miss the point a bit because you're well into the "virtuous circle" of efficiency here as well as better throttle response, the motor will run cleaner than any carb and you're likely to get better engine life, especially with the (requisite?) PCV as well.

I for one would be very interested in a before and after rolling road. At the very minimum it is going to be 15% over SUs and more likely 20%. That's got to be worth having. I'd love to get some figures. The Rover Vitesse is supposed to have 190bhp (although I've also read 187bhp which seems more likely) from the less advanced flapper system and thats with 9.75:1 as opposed to 10.5:1 with the P6. Now the Vitesse of course has a better cylinder head than the P6 and it's own exhaust valves which didn't become a feature of the Range Rover until around 1993 I believe.

So as standard the 10.5:1 with EFi should at least match the Vitesse and with RR heads should be 5-10bhp up so we're pushing 200bhp. It would seem nonsense not to do this upgrade at the same time given good heads can be had for £50. They'll even have the slight "cut outs" for the injectors too so no filing needed unless you want to match up the ports.

On top of that a chip and mild road cam has got to get you up to around 220bhp with no great effort and sticking with the original P6 motor. Not bad seeing you start out with 164 (incredibly optimistic) and realistically in an old, worn car more likely 130-140ish. That's about as far as I'd like to take it but +70% of usable power is pretty good in my book. Especially with better economy and emissions.

Of course the obvious route to power would be a direct Land Rover Discovery 3.9EFi transplant and simply skim to head back to 10.5:1 but I'm thinking here the cam would be well short of optimal for a lightweight road car.

Would like some experience to confirm my speculations....
 
I am thinking a Megasquirt or other configurable system to remove any "chipping " requirement.
 
After the next club magazine comes out I will post what I have recently done (3500s now with MS2 driving a Range-Rover GEMS top end) :wink:

That and when I have figured out what is killing my EFI pumps. Second one in a month died a few days ago. :cry:
 
PeterZRH said:
Giggedy indeed!

Without spoilers is it OK to ask whether you had rolling road numbers?

I wish, but unfortunately not - however the seat of the pants dyno confirms things are much better, my wife also confirms.

I guess a cheap (and extremely simplistic) way to have done it would have been to log the car doing a pull in 4th gear on a known section of road under specific weather conditions with no traffic.

The same 4th gear pull could have been performed after EFI installation in the same conditions and then the logs compared. Looking at the "RPMdot" field (which is the rate of change or RPM) could have been quite interesting...
 
An "in gear" test is always the best measure, traditionally the 50-70mph was the one to take notice of as this would represent an overtaking scenario. The P6 was launched in the days of single carriageway main roads and trucks which could barely top 35mph so overtaking was the issue. 0-60 are usually rubbish for real world driving especially with an automatic.

What else apart from the EFi have you got in this car? Are you 10.5:1? I think it would be odd not to do it with the later cylinder heads.

In nearly all cases EFi is worth 20% o 1960s and 1970s cars and more where the carburettor solution is highly compromised (think MGB GT V8). Typically a 2 litre 4 pot would go from 100bhp to 120bhp or thereabouts. The honourable exception being the 2000TC courtesy of drainpipes instead of carbs.
 
Spec of engine is pretty standard really:

Original 9.25:1 engine (build date of car is Dec 1973)
Camshaft of unknown origin but in apparently good nick
10 bolt heads
Range-Rover/Disco GEMS inlet manifold, plenum (so car is currently masquerading as a 4.6 as per the plenum) and injectors.
Crank fired ignition - MS2extra driven Ford EDIS system using gen2 coilpacks.
EFI also driven by MS2extra.

Innovate LC1 wideband oxygen sensor to keep tabs on things.

Stainless exhaust
Electric rad fan (From a 2.0l Mpi Discovery)
 
So taking a Rover Vitesse as a benchmark you're a little down on CR but have a more advanced EFi. So it's reasonable to expect around 190 ish bhp?
 
May have found reason for efi pump not being happy, I had a couple of hoses swapped about on the swirl pot! The feed was going into the top, which is about the worst place for it.... Doh! :oops:
 
After seeing reference to my installation, thought I'd better give an update.

First the set up.
Standard engine, 10.5 to 1 CR,(rope seal at the back). SD1 heads, front cover and distributor.
3.9 cam.
1995 Range Rover 14CUX EFi system. Except plenum ( no 3.9 on the top).

Still to connect are the neutral/park wire and the speed signal.
Not connected because the n/p wire needs a relay to invert the signal and the speed signal is too low for the ECU.

When first used was disappointing, prone to flooding on start up and poor fuel consumption. ( 10MPG)

Since then I have reprogrammed a chip increase the tick over to 700rpm and 800rpm in drive or reverse( when the n/p wire is connected)
and reduce the fuelling by 10% across the board in maps 2 and 5. Currently running map 5 and have added llambda sensors so with a change of
tune resistor I am going to run map 5. ( UK cat map).
Found a suspect spark plug so fitted a new set (only 1000miles) and last fill up was 15 MPG.
With the new Gaz shocks the drive is much better. ( it puts a smile on my face anyway).
As it has only done "local" journeys to date I don't think this is representative.

Thinking of having the injectors cleaned and putting it on a rolling road.

Will keep you updated.

Jim.
 
After swapping the fuel lines about on the swirl pot the EFI pump is silent again and I have just covered 20 miles, including a few on the M3. Hopefully there is no permanent damage to the pump, I will find out over the next few days I guess...

Car was running extremely rich (idling in the 10's) when first fired up so having them mixed up obviously had a dramatic effect on fuelling. Ran VE analyse and AFR's are mostly back to normal - however I noticed that the manifold air pressure is a bit high at idle, 40kPa instead of the usual 30-32kPa so somethings still not quite right.

Perhaps I fouled a plug when it was running so rich, so checking those will be my port of call.
 
Quagmire said:
Spec of engine is pretty standard really:

Original 9.25:1 engine (build date of car is Dec 1973)
Camshaft of unknown origin but in apparently good nick
10 bolt heads
Range-Rover/Disco GEMS inlet manifold, plenum (so car is currently masquerading as a 4.6 as per the plenum) and injectors.
Crank fired ignition - MS2extra driven Ford EDIS system using gen2 coilpacks.
EFI also driven by MS2extra.

Innovate LC1 wideband oxygen sensor to keep tabs on things.

Stainless exhaust
Electric rad fan (From a 2.0l Mpi Discovery)

This is similar to the spec of my SD1 on Megasquirt, 9.35CR stamped on the block, standard 3.5 carb spec but unknown factory camshaft (most likely Land Rover) with a standard hotwire efi manifold, standard SD1 manifolds and downpipes then 2.5" straight through sports exhaust and EDIS8. Mine made 170bhp on the dyno with the top end off the scale rich, standard carb lump is usually stated as being 155bhp in the SD1. We reckoned if the fueling and ignition was optimised we could possibly get another 10bhp out of it?

Next mod planned will be to get the spare heads skimmed as far as they'll go and a little diy porting. Maybe doing that I could get an easy 180-190bhp without spending any more money.
 
That's disappointing in terms of BHP. If that really is a LR profile cam, then it might be wise to lose that first.

180bhp seems a reasonable target without upping the CR, the vitesse is slightly higher and makes 187bhp.

I've not read much positive about porting other than as a fairly marginal tidy up and port-matching exercise.
 
The guy who hosted our dyno day said most people come down are disappointed by the figures it puts out, they don't do 'commercial' tuning but were doing group runs to help fund the projects the students were working on. On another rolling road it may have made 180bhp, who knows? Anyway, I spend most of my time driving between 1200rpm and 3000rpm so to me a Landy cam could be more beneficial?

As for my planned porting and skim, most 'experts' would bang on about how the only way to up the CR on the RV8 is to replace the pistons, but I'm going for the biggest skim I can get, knock up a batch of pedestal shims, throw it together with tin gaskets and do it my way :D
 
Well, there must be potential there because your's is a better EFi system than the 14CUX and I've read the tornado chip will take a vitesse to 200-205.

Proof pending and dyno depending of course.

If only I had a garage at t he moment....
 
When it went to the dyno my wideband lambda kit had been broken for over a month so I'd only been tweaking the low-midrange fueling by ear on the motorway, and the ignition map is set conservatively. The guy said there was a lot more to come looking at the afr's. I'd also been having a lot of trouble with worn/mismatched injectors causing uneven fueling.

If I was to book it into a specialist to optimise the fuel and ignition maps it would probably make a little bit more power/torque overall, but I'm happy with it as is, goes better than the hotwire and carbs ever did.

In reality expecting near 200bhp from a relatively factory spec 3.5 is being optimistic.
 
Back
Top