Excellent trackside engineering! Hey we all use paper/wood pulp gaskets....
Fuel injection is undeniably a Good Thing in the car world. While carbs occasionally offer an advantage or two under very specific circumstances, injection plays a central role in things like 200 mph Corvettes that get 20-plus mpg and emit a fraction of the pollution of a 36-horsepower VW Bug.
So, given the choice, injection is the thing. But in Lemons, desperate times routinely call for desperate measures, and having your Porsche 924’s Bosch K-Jetronic injection go kaput in the middle of the race certainly qualifies as a desperate time.
After trying numerous unsuccessful fixes on their vintage K-Jet system, the brilliantly named It Won’t Get Better Unless You Pick At It Racing collectively uttered those familiar old-gearhead words while working on their Porsche 924: “Let’s rip off all of that injection crap and slap on a carb!”
There were a couple of problems with this strategy. One, they didn’t actually have a carburetor. Two, this was a Porsche 924, not a Camaro–they couldn’t just pop down to the local AutoZone for an Edelbrock manifold. But–and here’s where the desperate measures really come into play–the team figured they were surrounded by typically spare-parts-rich Lemons racers who had plenty of scrap materials (more on those in a minute) from which to construct a simple carb adapter for the stock 924 manifold.
A quick stroll around the paddock scored the team a trusty single-throat SU carburetor and a low-pressure fuel pump from the dark recesses of an Austin Mini enthusiast’s toolbox. An inventory of their own trailer produced a perfect, lightweight, easily workable material for the adapter: wood.
After a few passes with a drill and a jigsaw (both for fabbing the adapter and cutting a necessary clearance hole in the hood), along with a few minutes spent MacGyvering a throttle linkage, the 924 ran well enough (terrible, by normal standards) to get back on track.
Fuel injection blues? Only at a Lemons race: Just replace everything with an old SU carburetor.
Excellent trackside engineering! Hey we all use paper/wood pulp gaskets....
I used a block of aluminum that I drilled holes in to fit a Turbo-Dodge throttle body on mine :)
The CIS and electrical implementation on the 924 is terrible and causes many to be parked and found for nearly free.
As I tell people in the 924 groups, carbs are better than that CIS nearly any day, but don't expect huge gains other than a running vehicle.
If they track down one of the carb intakes used on the version of that engine used on some AMCs, they could end up with a slightly better long term solution.
Stefan said:.If they track down one of the carb intakes used on the version of that engine used on some AMCs, they could end up with a slightly better long term solution.
Hi , which AMC was that ? and was that the only motor in the AMC those years ?
Thanks
"Organic carbon fiber"
Did the they olive oil in the dash pot?
isn't that also the same engine as in the Dodge Omni?
Hopefully they give the intake a nice coat of deck stain before the next race. Y'know, to impress the tech inspectors.
I thought about doing the same with my old 924 (which i no longer own but is still in my yard...) but with an actual DCOE. I'm not convinced it's NOT a good idea.
My thing with the 924 engine is if you're not adding boost, you should at least be reducing complexity. If you want an amount of complexity commensurate with the 100hp you're going to get out of it, a carb starts to make sense.
mad_machine said:isn't that also the same engine as in the Dodge Omni?
Nope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_discontinued_Volkswagen_Group_petrol_engines#EA831
The Omni used a 1.6L Peugot OHC, a VW 1.7L SOHC from the VW Rabbit and the Chrysler 2.2L SOHC. The 2.0L in the 924 was from Audi 100LS and some VW LT vans, but was never used in any of the VW cars. So it doesn't use the bellhousing pattern of the more common VW water cooled engines. At least the 2.0L shares bellhousing pattern with the later Audi 5-cylinders, so there's hope if you can sort out the rest of the swap parts, but I5's are thin on the ground anymore and there are other challenges involved with that swap.
That said, the 924 was originally a VW project they were developing with Porsche, but the 70's oil crisis scared them and they sold it to Porsche and made the Scirocco instead, so the 924 has a LOT of VW parts in and under it and the 944 is an evolution of that, so there's lots of parts that can be swapped between them to make them better in many ways.
californiamilleghia said:Stefan said:.If they track down one of the carb intakes used on the version of that engine used on some AMCs, they could end up with a slightly better long term solution.
Hi , which AMC was that ? and was that the only motor in the AMC those years ?
Thanks
The AMC Gremlin starting in 1977: https://ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/amc-gremlin/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_discontinued_Volkswagen_Group_petrol_engines#EA831
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