Installing a XFI Sportsman Throttle Body EFI System in a 1965 Buick.

[elagache]

Hi Walt and mid-60s Buick fans of high tech, 

Mounted on the firewall, it may see a lot of heat from the headers.

The only free space on the firewall would be precisely in the middle, so it would be as far away from the headers as is possible on the firewall.

I mounted a MSD box on the inside of my car, on the firewall above the glove box. Your air conditioning likely consumes that space.

Alas indeed the Vintage Air system is much larger than the original 1965 Buick A/C system.  There just isn't much room behind the dash.

The front radiator support is a possibility.
Wonder if it will fit IN the cowl area. Lots of airflow to keep it cool. The wiper mechanism will consume some of that space.

Interesting ideas.  I need to drop off the instructions this morning.  I'll ask Greg about it when I do.

Thanks for the suggestions! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

Quickie update on this project.  I put into Greg's hands the instructions so he could finally procede as FAST intended!  Greg had already gotten the throttle body installed at 10 am this morning.  Here is the front view:



Here is a passenger side view:



However, Greg and I weren't sure where to install the E6 Ignition box.  This afternoon I posted a question on the FAST technical support forum, but so far no answers.  Doesn't FAST know where to put these ignition boxes? 

Stay tuned . . . . .

Edouard

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

The installation of the new fuel injection system in my trusty wagon is continuing.  Greg got most of the ignition components installed today and was supposed to start on the wiring harness of the ECU unit sometime this afternoon.  Here is a photo of the MSD distributor:



All of the MSD electronics have been disabled so that the E6 controller box will control the ignition.  Nonetheless, you do need an ignition coil.  Greg parked the FAST E92 coil on the driver's side inner fender:



I posted a question on the FAST technical support forum about whether or not the E6 Ignition box can withstand a little moisture.  The reply was anything short of actually immersing it in water should be fine.  So that opened up many other locations with better airflow.  Greg finally put the box between the driver's side inner fender and the headlights:



That location should be cool enough for the box to avoid overheating.

FAST technical support warned against having the ignition coil wiring being anywhere close to the ECU wiring harness.  Fortunately, in this arrangement the ignition wiring is on the driver's side of the engine while the ECU and its wiring is on the passenger side.

If all goes well, Greg was hoping to try to start up and tune the engine on Friday . . . . . .

Stay tuned!!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

Sorry to fall behind on this saga, but it has been a crazy week.  The ECU finally got installed by Friday:



There is also a new fuel pressure sensor but alas I botched the photo of that module.  Since the E6 Ignition box is in an out of the way location, I might go back to look at my scheme to paint the ECU unit leaving a stripe at the top for the LED displays and the FAST logo in red, but toning down that big red assembly.

Alas, one electrical adapter was needed and it wasn't supposed to arrive until the end of Friday.  So my trusty wagon had to wait once more.  The hope is to try to start the engine sometime on Monday.  However, it may not be possible to set all the tuning parameters for a few days.  We are expecting some rain until the end of Tuesday.  Since I still haven't upgraded the tires and the engine might once more be doing 500 hp, it might not the best of times to be driving my trusty wagon on slick roadways!

Stay tuned!

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

I just got off the phone with Orinda Motors and the engine is running!! 

Of course this was expected, but whenever you make such a drastic change in an old car, there is always the fear of surprises! 

Greg is going through the engine tuning procedure as I type.  I should have some sort of a report by the end of day.  Depending on the situation I might even have photos or video.

Stay tuned!

Cheers, Edouard 

[GS66]

Good news, congratulations!

[elagache]

Dear Jim and mid-60s Buick fans of high tech.

Good news, congratulations!

Thanks!

Sorry for not explaining what is going on until now - crazy week.  Like I believe all of the FAST XFI line-up, the Sportsman is "semi-self-tuning."  It needs a "program" to start the engine and then you use a laptop and software provided by FAST to adjust various parameters of the ECU to get good performance out of the engine.  Rich at FAST-Man-EFI will provide you with the initial program to get the engine started as part of your purchase of the equipment from him.

I suppose getting the engine started is a little rough, but you need to get the engine warmed up before you can adjust any of the parameters.  Once that is done you can use the FAST software to progressively improve the tune.  The system is able to do some self-adjusting based on the sensor inputs.  Greg was very pleased to see that this electronic fuel injection system was doing a much better job at reducing pollutants than the old EFI system, implying that it was indeed promoting more efficient combustion.

We had rain yesterday, so Greg decided to defer the road test portion of the tuning.  I just checked and that is what is going to happen this afternoon, hopefully that will be sufficient time to complete that phase of the tuning.  Traditionally, Orinda Motors keeps a car one more night to make sure that it starts well from cold.  If that turns out to be the case, I'll be bringing home my trusty wagon sometime on Wednesday.

I promise to take a video once she is finally all tuned up!

Cheers, Edouard

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

Yesterday I took a number of videos of my trusty wagon settling into the Sportsman EFI system.  I finally was able to put them up on YouTube this morning.  Here is a short video of the engine idling just after being started.  It starts out rough, but the self-tuning recovers relatively quickly:

https://youtu.be/7JCXZlJdaQs

Here is a 5 minute video taken during a test drive on a local freeway. 

https://youtu.be/Mnnz8Ng1qX0

Unfortunately, I don't have a comparison video, but when the engine is quiet, it seems so much quieter than before.  My 51 year old wagon is almost as quiet as our 2000 Buick Century!!  Once the engine got warmed up, the idle is indeed extremely stable.  At some points, the car is literally cruising in overdrive with the engine at idle.

There is still some tweaking to do, but so far I'm extremely pleased with this upgrade!

Cheers, Edouard 

[telriv]

Edouard,

  Ever get that shim installed for the starter??? Sounds like it may still need one.


Tom T.

[GS66]

That looks like a great setup! Your car is quiet, even with the big headers.

[elagache]

Dear Tom, Jim, and mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

Thanks guys!  My trusty wagon is doing very well on the preliminary tune and Rich and Greg have made some significant improvements that they hope will be good enough so that she can come home tomorrow.

Ever get that shim installed for the starter??? Sounds like it may still need one.

Sorry, I had forgotten about that suggestion.  I'm a little puzzled though, neither video shows the starter in action! 

Honestly, about the only thing that the old EFI system was doing well was starting the engine.  Almost always, the engine would start up right away.  Getting the configuration to start up a big engine is something of a "seat of your pants" matter according to Rich.  I'll find out tomorrow if Rich and Greg found a nice formula when they try to cold start my wagon after sitting overnight.

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high-tech,

My trusty wagon got a bill of good health and got to home up this afternoon.  The XFI Sportsman continues to automatically adjust the tune, so the control isn't perfect and in particular, the idling starts out a bit rough before settling down.  Nonetheless, the car is much easier to control and and on the road, the engine continues to be steady in its idle.  At last I could bring her onto the driveway and into the garage without being afraid of hitting something!

I'm very nervous about having my wagon out around holidays because she was hit the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2010.  So she will spend Friday and the weekend in the safety of the garage.  Sometime next week, I'll try to get her back on the road so she can continue her tuning "education."  Before putting her into the garage though, I took a quick video of the engine starting so that Tom could see if he still hears the noise that suggested to him the starter needed to be shimmed.  Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/lkNg7fSgKKU

Unfortunately, the radiator fans start just before the engine starts to it is difficult to hear.  However, to my ears the engine is starting up very smoothly.  Opinions?

Thanks for your support! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[elagache]

Dear mid-60s Buick fans of high tech,

I thought I had brought my wagon home and all that was left to do was let it self-tune.  However, it turned out that Greg at Orinda Motors hadn't gotten back to the FAST distributor Richard Nedbal with key piece of information: the current state of the tuning program.

At least the Sportsman (and perhaps the entire FAST XFI line,) are truly hybrid systems.  Unlike traditional EFI systems that have no self-tuning, they will improve the tune over time on their own.  But completely different from automatically self-tuning systems, you can access the state of the tune as a set tables and manually adjust them.

Just before sending my wagon home, the guys at Orinda Motors took my wagon for a long drive and enabled a feature of software that comes with the Sportsman: Logging.  Those logs provide information on what the engine is actually doing and suggest modifications to the tune.  Orinda Motors sent the log data to Rich, but not the current state of the tuning program.  Since the Sportsman is self-tuning, without the current state of the tune, the logs were meaningless.

Well, I had two choices.  I could have brought my wagon back to Orinda Motors to download that tune program or I could have tried to get myself.  For most guys, it would be easy, but I'm one of those hard-core Mac guys since 1988 and the FAST software is of course for Windows.  Nonetheless, I really am a hard-core Mac guy, so with a little extra work, I managed to get the FAST software to run on a Mac.  The gory details are on this post on the FAST technical support forum:

http://www.cpgnation.com/forum/threads/running-fast-software-on-a-mac-using-crossover.25909/

If you just want to see the proof of concept here is a YouTube video showing my MacBook launching the FAST Sportsman software using a environment called Crossover:

https://youtu.be/9QvPSRSMdb0

With this advance, I was able to download the tune program myself and send it over to Rich myself.  The next morning, he sent me a revised program with a few adjustments given what he observed in the logs.  Now it was time to see if I could upload a tune program to my electronic fuel injection system - and the answer is . . . .

https://youtu.be/EflXYoDUVKk

YES! 

Now I started up the engine and I took this quick video of my engine idling while connected to the Mac:

https://youtu.be/PmgN0JfDBKY

Once all this software stuff was done, I got my wagon on the road and . . . . . WOW!!!  There is such an improvement in control that it feels almost like a new engine.  There is more power than I can ever handle, but when I need to make a precise control, the car moves at my command.  There was another revelation.  The engine is even quieter than it was on Thursday when I brought her home.  As the tune gets more precise, the engine only gets the fuel it needs for the job.  As a result it is quieter and saves gas!

The FAST line of electronic fuel injection systems really allow you to have your cake and eat it too.  You don't have to have your car towed to a chassis dynamometer to get a great tune.  A FAST dealer like Rich can send you a startup tune program that is good enough to get the engine started and then you can follow the instructions to get the car working well enough that you can drive it.  After that, you can use the logging feature to collect precise data on how your engine is running to send back to someone like Rich. Then the FAST dealer can remotely adjust the tune until the car is really running like a top. 

So this is a completely new scheme for electronic fuel injection.  It greatly lowers the cost of getting a quality tune and doesn't leave you at the mercy of self-tuning.  If it doesn't work as you want, log the problem area and send the tune back to be adjusted.

There is always a concern about how well high-tech and classic cars will mix.  But in this case, it is absolutely a spectacular success!!

Cheers, Edouard 

[cwmcobra]

Congrats Edouard.  I can see the big smile on your face from the words you wrote!

 

Chuck

[elagache]

Dear Chuck and mid-60s Buick fans of high-tech,

I can see the big smile on your face from the words you wrote!

Thanks!  Yes indeed I'm feeling a whole lot better about driving my wagon now.  I had a few too many close calls were the car lurched instead of moving as I need her to.  Power is wonderful, but you still need to be able easily maneuver into the garage!

The one downside is that the Sportsman ECU is definitely a visible distraction in the engine bay.  I don't know if there is any other system that allows you to take control of the tune but is better hidden in the engine bay.  As far as I can tell, the FiTech Fuel Injection systems are 100% self-tuning with no sort of override.  I'm extremely impressed and pleased at how the FAST Sportsman can be adjusted by a professional tuner without needing to do anything more download the tune from the Sportsman, than exchange some emails, and then upload the revised tune to the Sportsman.  That sure beats hoping that the self-tuning will eventually get it right.

Cheers, Edouard