How many guys are daily driving there fuel injected slants?

Mostly concerned about the guys running tbi off of mega squirt 1 or 2.

Its funny how things in life change, and the plans for our cars. Well I am looking to put my valiant in to daily driving status here pretty soon. I am thinking of going to a tbi set up. The car is a 64 valiant, stock bottom end head has been shaved 9.5-1 compression a cam slightly more than erson 2790-280, dutra front manifold modifided rear, recurved D.I. distributor and HEI. T5 trans and 3.73 gears.

My thought is modify a 1bbl manifold drop the tbi on. I will still have manifold heat so I think the TBI should work pretty good. I like the TBI idea keeping things simple less plumbing and not having to fiddle with fuel rail and less wiring, the fuel pressure regulator is allready on the TBI unit. I haven't desided if MS1 is good for me or MS2. I wouldn't need to control ignition but would be nice. How ever I would like the box to tell the electric fan when to come on and off. Can MS1 do this. Is it possible to run my AEM wide band O2 to the MS to use what I already have.


I am just trying it wrap my head around this and see if its even right for me. How long did it take to write your initial program and was is streetable. How much tuning do you guys have to keep doing to get happy results.

I daily drive mine. The MS itself is reliable - its the systems that surround it that may or may not be depending on what you do.

I didn't even know they still sold MS1. I thought it was a dieing breed. If I were starting from scratch I'd do MS2 at a minimum, preferably MS3 just for the matter of staying current. The MS2 does have programmable outputs you can base off of any input. I use these to drive my electric fan.

The difference between MPFI and TBI is pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things. You'll kick yourself later if you did all the work for tbi and realized how much little more you had to do to get MPFI. Been there, done that. I wouldn't do TBI again.

It certainly is possible to run wideband. There are many controllers people use with the MS - Innovate's, AEM, Zeitronix, theres quate a few.... anything that outputs the standard 0-5v signal.

It comes with an initial tune... I want to say for a Chevy 350 smallblock but don't quote me on that. Once you get the basic parameters down to start and run you'll be able to drive it around. Getting the warm up enrichment can be tricky. Autotune will take care of the main map for the most part. One can't really say how long it'd take to be able to commute with it... just really depends on how much effort and time you put into it. I will say this though - your mind needs to be in the many weeks to many months time frame. I don't know what state your car is now - I highly suggest making sure everything is good with a carb first before even thinking about efi.

I second Pierre's comment about the systems around it being suspect. In order to get my MSII to run reliably I had to redesign the electrical system. The design that has the main feed going through the bulkhead connector through the ammeter and back out the bulkhead connecter just had too many iffy connections in it. The voltage was not reliable enough to work well. The electronics in the ignition side of the MSII are pretty susceptible to electronic noise as well. You have to be very careful with your grounds, and I ended up putting ferrite chokes such as you see on the chords of computers on all the main wires in they system. I have one on the alternator feed, the main feed to the relay box, the pickups from the distributor, ETC.

All the fussy electronic considerations revolve around ignition control. If you leave the stock ignition and timing system in place then things will likely run fine without major upgrades to your system. However, there are big economy gains to be made with good timing control. I think more so than with fuel management.

The magic bullet for me was to ground the sensors back to the ECU box and not the block. The block was a source of too much ground noise. The final culprit that caused problems was the pick up in the distributor. It might have worked well enough for a stock Mopar electronic ignition, but there was a a little movement in the epoxy pick up module on the armature. It seems the EFI is just more sensitive to these kinds of things.

I am also in agreement with Pierre about the TBI vs. MPI. But I am going to go one step further. I would say if you are going to do this, consider going sequential with the MSIII. I wish I had. This involves working out a trigger wheel and pick up of some kind, so is another step in the project. You get a smoother idle with sequential on a leaner mixture. However, I think the TBI would be simple, and reliable. You could do that first, and then collect the parts needed to go sequential. Here is the thing, no matter what system you install, you have some problems, and you will work them out. So, do you really want to do that twice,or three times? There is a good chance that once it is running with a beginning, first step kind of set up, you will just leave it that way and never upgrade.


After working out the electronic gremlins that haunted mine for awhile the EFI has been absolutely reliable, and efficient. But I have to say the early teeth cutting challenges kind of eroded what what had been an unshakable, rock solid confidence in this car.I think once you get over the shake down stuff, the more you drive it the better you will like it. Good luck, and let us know how this works out.

Sam

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