Dear George and mid-60s Buick fans of high-tech,
Anyone here installed an aftermarket fuel injection system on one of their Buicks? Heard from a friend, they cost around a grand. Supposed to be pretty nice, and give you a pretty good increase in performance, driveabilty and gas mileage.
I've had electronic fuel injection on my wagon since I upgraded to a 1968 big-block Buick engine. I decided to "do it right" so to speak, so for example I went with a new gas tank with an integrated electric fuel pump and a return line.
The engine builder set me up with a FAST EZ-EFI 1.0 system when I got the engine back in 2013. The reason for going with the EZ-EFI system was that it is automatically self-tuning so once you enter some basic data about the engine it is
suppose to automatically give you a decent tune. Unfortunately that engine as a host of mysterious problems and finally busted the rear crankshaft bearing after only 3 months. I sent the engine back to TA-Performance to be repaired and after the repairs were made, the engine was running great - actually a little
too great! It was so powerful and the EZ-EFI system was not giving me particularly good control of the engine - to the point it was a bit dangerous.
At that point I searched around for an expert who could help me and was steered to consider the FAST XFI Sportman system instead. The installation is described on this thread:
http://65gs.com/board/index.php?topic=2719.0The reason to go with the XFI Sportsman was that while it does its own self-tuning, you can also go in with a laptop and make corrections. Immediately after switching to the Sportsman, I was very pleased with the improvements, but then I started working with fellow who sold me the system to improve the tune. Every time, he would make adjustments - the tune would further improve!
Last Tuesday, the fellow who sold me the system was in the area and offered to give me a professional tune for his usual fee.
WOW! It is another huge improvement in control, and of all things, further engine noise reduction. Without a full explanation, here is a quick comparison. This is a 3d graph generated by the FAST software of the tune as it stood on March 26:
If you look at the center of the graph, you'll see some "bumps." Engines do not operate in a bumpy way, these curves should be perfectly smooth. So when the fuel supply jumps in this sort of way will cause your engine to run more harshly than necessary. These are the sort of errors introduced by the self-tuning algorithm. Here is the same graph of the completed professional tune:
You can see at how smooth it has become. That smooth distribution of fuel translates to smooth performance with quiet and reasonable fuel economy.
My system was more than 3 times what you were considering, but it is very close to the sort of computer control of an engine that you'll fine in a modern car. There is even add-ons available to control GMs modern transmissions with computer control. The $1000 variety of electronic fuel injection system is basically a "digital carburetor," cannot give you the real advantages that you'll find in a modern car.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the EZ-EFI 1.0 a lot more than a carburetor. Any fuel injection system has some advantages over carburetors. Starting is easier with a self-learning fuel injection system than a carburetor for example. However, a self-tuning fuel injection system may actually perform worse than a carefully tuned carburetor. The self-tuning algorithms have something to be desired. So much so, that once my car was professionally tuned, it was necessary to turn off the self-tuning feature because it would make things worse in an attempt to make things
"better."I need educate myself a bit further on the differences and hope to update my tread with additional details of the difference and include some video so that you can compare the differences for yourself. What I can attest without any hesitation is that a professionally tuned fuel injection systems runs rings around any self-tuning system.
I hope that some
"food for thought."Cheers, Edouard
