Race Fuel Injection System

[Jens Loco]

Poweradders like nitrous, turbochargers, and superchargers are a natural fit with EFI. If you want to use power adders now or in the future, buy an EFI kit that is Power Adder Compatible from the start. A power adder compatible kit will work fine with or without boost or nitrous, and it might be impossible to make a non-compatible kit work with power adders. Unfortunately, not all power adder compatible kits are created equal. They usually have:

Most fuel injection kits will work with your existing ignition system. All they really need is a tach signal. Ignition Timing Advance can be handled Mechanically and/or with Vacuum, just like with a carburetor.

Electric fuel pumps come in three basic types. As long as a fuel pump provides the Flow Rate your engine needs at the pressure your Fuel Injected or Carbureted system requires, it will work just fine. It is just a matter of deciding which one works best for your installation.

There is nothing fundamentally stopping you from running a leaded fuel in these engines. Many of them however rely on full time closed loop fuel control via the wideband lambda sensor and as David has pointed out, the sensor life is severely shortened on leaded fuels. Fuels such as E50-E70 also give the same kind of anti knock qualities as some of the leaded race fuels at a fraction of the cost. The only problem with ethanol fuels is that you need to have significantly more fuel flow available which can be a problem on a DI application. Running a higher fuel pressure with an uprated pump and spill valve can build a lot more headroom into the fuel system but on the 2.0 TFSI engine we recently calibrated we were limited to about E30 to provide a safe injector duty cycle.

I am always suspicious if the O2 sensors sees more than 50 hours of leaded fuel operation. For dedicated Road Race cars this means we replace O2 sensors at least every season. When lead fouled, the sensors seem to be slower to respond, and often read a bit lean.

The fuel injector in an electronic fuel injection (EFI) system plays a critical role in the performance and reliability of a modern internal combustion engine. It is the injector that allows EFI systems to attain fuel flow accuracy and efficiency that was previously not accessible with carbureted systems.

There have been many evolutions of this original Bosch-designed EV1, such as slimmer EV14 or EV6 injectors with disc-style actuation. But because of its ease of construction and reliability, the EV1 remains the preferred option for drag racing engine builders.

At its core, a fuel injector is a simple solenoid valve that is used to meter the amount of fuel that the engine demands at a given moment in time. This valve can be broken down into a few main components for an EV1-style injector:

However, when any of those same engines are at peak torque, they will consume much more fuel. When you add, say, 50 psi of boost at that peak torque level, you are now changing the theoretical volume of that cylinder. As a result, larger fuel injectors must be used to maintain the optimal AFR needed.

For performance applications, the primary consideration is the fuel flow needed at peak torque, where fuel demand and engine stress is highest. That demanding torque range is the basis you use to determine the requirements of your injector size.

This is because injectors function by allowing fuel to flow into the cylinder in specific and controlled intervals. Each of these intervals is determined by a precise electromagnetic pulse. How often these pulses occur is known as the duty cycle. If an injector is at 100% duty cycle, the needle that allows the pass-through of fuel flow never closes. At that point, your injector is no more controlled than a valve on a garden hose.

How do you solve this idle issue when you need a very large injector for your application? In the case of high-horsepower engines, typically 2,500 hp and up, a single fuel injector per cylinder will not suffice; rather, two fuel injectors will be used per cylinder as a primary and secondary injector.

A smaller primary injector is used because of its better idle characteristics compared to a larger secondary fuel injector. This way, you can get the fuel you need at peak torque without sacrificing the precise fuel control needed to maintain good idle characteristics.

Now that you have considered the key factors that go into choosing the right fuel injector for your application, it is just as important to pick the rest of your fuel system components with the same level of research.

Many injector manufacturers will give their customers recommendations on what fuel pump flow and system filtration will be required to match an injector setup. If you are unsure of what size and system is right for your engine build, consult your injector supplier. Every drop of fuel counts! P

Anthony Donnarumma has eight years of professional experience in the automotive racing industry. He currently works as a Design Engineer and Engine Builder for Moran Motorsports. Prior to this position, he worked for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in the SRT Motorsports group as an engineer to help develop the 2021 Dodge Challenger Drag Pak. He has a BS in Engineering Design from Western Michigan University.

Sorry guys, maybe I didn't word my query exactly correctly. I think I know enough about the motorsport history - but I wanted to know what eventually happened to the system, or the technology? Did it, for instance, ever get close to being used on any road-car engines ? Did it figure as a manufacturer's option on any engines of the time ?

Clearer now ?

My original response applies: T.J. was little more than a semi-controlled hose aimed into the induction system which was fine for alcohol-burning racing engines (as I wrote, like Hilborn-Travers) but not a patch on metered and timed systems (Lucas, Bosch, Kugelfischer, etc.).

Carbs have always been easier to maintain and I'd say that Lucas system spares availability would be why the Triumphs have been converted.

Do you mean D-B and BMW petrol-injection cars or diesels?

In the mid-1960s Tecalemit Jackson developed a fuel injection system for race car engines. I recall travelling down to Plymouth to see the operation in (about) 1967.

For a time the system was used on racing/rallying Fords, such as the Broadspeed Anglias, and on some 'works' Lotus-Cortinas.

But then .... what happened ?

AAGR

Sorry but black smoke off idle is a diseasel characteristic!

Black smoke at idle is not unusual with mechanical PI systems: if you consider the volume of fuel needed per cycle at idle it must be quite hard to control it to such fine limits and rich mixture is the safe option.

The Bosch and Kugelfischer systems used by Daimler-Benz and BMW (and Peugeot) in the period you refer to were mechanical.

Back to basics, you almost never find a carb on a modern car as even entry-level shopping cars seem to have had single point PI for 15-20 years now.

Long before 1970 Bosch had been providing fuel injection systems for automobiles both petrol and diesel that injected sequential spurts of fuel either into the intake port or directly into the combustion chamber. The racing Porsches used it but from about 1970 on wards so did the road going cars. It is a complex system using what is essentially a diesel injection pump.

The next system Bosch came up with-in 1973- was the CI (for Constant Injection) that simply squirted a continuous stream of fuel into the intake runner. It did however use a sensor plate system which served both as an air mass meter and as a deterant to using high lift camshafts due to the pulsations in the intake runner causing the plate to flutter. Their next system was the EFI (Electronic Fuel Injection) which used sensors, computers and solinoid controlled injectors to provide fine control of fuel entering the engine.

I nearly bought a Tecalemit Jackson system for an E Type Jag that I was intending to race-it was very basic with minimal control of fuel flow. The "throttle bodies" resembled modified Weber carbs. I have no idea how well it would work--fine at full throttle I suspect.

It may have been sold as such, but to call the Wal Philips device a 'fuel injection system' is a bit of an exaggeration... it was a cast alloy tube with a throttle butterfly for the airflow. Fuel was 'controlled' by a rod that ran horizontally across the top of the tube, and a hole in the rod let the fuel in. And that was about it. The butterfly and the rod were linked together and the idea was to get them sort of synchronised to your throttle. Because there was no other fuel control, float chamber or whatever, the trick on a bike was to bump start it by running like hell to give you time to turn on the fuel tap, jump on and let out the clutch. If it didn't start, you dried out the spark plug & tried again, if it did start you probably wished you'd managed to get on the saddle before it fired up....

There is quite a lot of misleading information in this thread. Difficult to know where to start without writing a whole book! I worked for Petrol Injection Ltd from 1963 to 1968 and continued to be involved with them for a few years after that. In 1967 I was the resident engineer at Ford Competitions Department, Boreham and all the Cortinas entered in the 1967 RAC rally were equipped with T-J fuel injection. (The rally was cancelled at the last minute because of the foot and mouth epidemic). All the Lotus 30s, 40s and 47s were equipped with T-J injection from the factory. The Lotus LV220 engines and the LV 240s also used T-J. I remember testing an LV240 engine with Colin Chapman and another guy at Lotus, Wymondham as I developed the fuel cam.

Many racing saloon cars also used T-J including Broadspeed and there were many car manufacturers who had development road cars fitted with the system for evaluation... these included Ford, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Simca, ASA (a spin off of Ferrari) and several others. The system went through many iterations and road kits were available for a large number of makes. A lot of development work went on and many new ideas were patented. Bosch were infringing many of the company's patents and Bosch settled out of court in the early 1970's for a very large sum of money. The company took the money... said thank you very much and then closed its doors.

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