I recently picked up a Crower mechanical injection unit with the purchase of a 64 Nova tube chassis car and was wondering what I have to deal with here. I have zero previous experience with mechanical injection so please bear with me. The unit is a Crower stack injection system that was initially set up for gasoline. I have a Crower pump that I am told was fazed out years ago due to weak pressure ability and that would need replacing. I want to run Methanol for its broader tuning range and better flow characteristics all together (from what I have read). I understand that the nozzle position is under the butterfly for alcohol and that they would need to be moved from their current, upper location. The injector unit its self is in good condition. No slop in the shaft bushings or butterflies ect, as it was very lightly used. I contacted the boys at Ron's Fuel Injection and they basically told me that everything I had except the injector its self is unusable for alky. So my question is this. Can anyone give me a baseline on pills, nozzles, ect to maybe get me off the ground? The car is about 2000lbs wet. The engine is a 327 with about 13.5 to 1 compression. Ported 049 Bowtie heads. The ttrans is a Doug Nash five speed. This is just a general overview of the car. Any other information I can definitely provide. Thanks for the read. Hack
Check out Kinsler Injection. They were a good resource 30 yrs ago but I don't know how they are now. I got an old technical manual from them when I was looking to run an early SBC Hilborn set-up. Click on thier Handbook/Catalog http://www.kinsler.com/ There's also Alky Digger out there on the interweb.
Hey get ahold of AlkyDigger, he has a good amount of vintage injection stuff available. Very knowledgeable and will help you get a baseline.
Contact Hilborn Fuel Injection and talk to Don Francisco. Here is the link. http://hilborninjection.com/. I would think you will need to get your pump flowed and they can he can recommend a base line for your nozzles and pill. From the base line I would also recommend you go three sizes up and three sizes down for. I'm not sure why the Crower would not work on Alcohol. Mechanical injection is mechanical injection no matter who makes it.
are you familiar at all with methanol?? the care and feeding of a methanol engine are much more involved than gas. methanol eats everything. some oils aren't compatible and will froth. you need to drain and clean all the lines every day you race. pull the nozzles and bypass valves and clean them too. My experience is in midgets with stack injection... if you don't know any drag guys near you that can help maybe hunt down some sprint car guys. they run stack injected methanol motors.
i have run several stack injector engines. i have run alch in all of them some with nitro. i have never drained and flushed any of them.but they were all driven very regularly. there is alot of alch. in race gas to that no one drains out. yes alch. it is more corrosive than gas.keeping a eye on the parts goes a long way. look for the white corrosion. the thing to do is run the car offten so its not just sitting there. i would recommend flushing at the end of the season. i would get a pyrometer to measure exhaust temps. the alch will provide no benefit if its not run at the proper exhaust temp. and if it is can provide up to 9% more power. i would also get a hydrometer so you can check the specific gravity of the fuel to make sure its not full of water. i would assume this is a drag only car. if you think you are going to street drive it then you are going to be choking and gaging on the exhaust. kinsler has been very good to me. alky digger has parts but does not work on cars so he cant provide tune up info. hilborn is good to. very helpful.
I ran my car every sat night and before I went to the track every week I cleaned the fuel system. Not everyone did... but not everyone won the track championship two years running either And I don't know of any race gas with methanol? Maybe ethonol?
Thanks for the replies guys. I contacted Kinsler and they were very helpful. They also said that the pump is way out of date. I think I will give them a shot. It is a drag only deal. I will update the thread as I know more. Thanks again.
if you have a guy in your area that runs inj. drag racer or circle track they can help you set things up. a few things to take note of. inj is opposite of a carb. with a carb you control what goes into the engine period. with inj. you control what goes back to the tank. which in turn controls what goes in the engine. the pump puts out way more than the engine needs. the control back to the tank is done by one way spring loaded poppet valves. there are three metering systems. the first sets the idle. this is done with a leak down gauge on the barrel valve. the leak is usually 20-30. i like mine a little rich due to fact there is no acc pump. the second circuit works from idle to around 6000 rpm. third is the high speed lean out. this is where the pump catches up to the engine and more fuel is sent back to the tank. hilborn gas nozzles are a 9 alch is 20 22 and up is alch-nitro. the number should be stamped into the nozzle. the pump can be run off a bracket with a belt drive off the crank or off the cam with the righr timing chain cover. these inj.need to be gravity fed. tank outlet above pump inlet. tank up in front of the engine. the system is controlled by a fuel shut off from inside the car. setting up everything should be done on the car not on the work bench due to distortion when the manifold is torqued down. it may all sound complicated but its actually very simple. good luck.
X2 I started with Mike since we first went out with the MG and he has helped me all along the way. I don't understand this comment; I wouldn't run my car without the injection. I'm running a 2-1/8" mechanical Hilborn. No problems what-so-ever. Pat
Thank you for the advice. The car was already set up and was supposedly running on gas. Sorry I was a little vague on my description. As far as the layout goes, it seems correct. I will post some pics from before I tore it down. I went out and looked at the nozzles and they have 20 stamped into them. The nozzles are mounted above the butterflies as such for a gas system?! I have no prior knowledge on how it ran or if it ran well. The guys at Rons said that most everything I have needs changed including the nozzle location to run methanol. I wonder if it even ran worth a shit set up this way? Its not really adding up at this point.
I ran injection on a mopar in a pull tractor years ago. It demanded more of my time and energy than I wanted to give it. It worked fine but seemed to crave attention. I ran alcohol, and ran alcohol in the carb also.Alcohol is only a problem if you let it be. Best of luck.
What do you intend to do with the car? Was it not running? Just wondering why you did not fire it as it was set up. It amazes me that people can't figure out how to run the hundreds of injected gasoline cars and their fuel systems without changing over to alcohol. Nothing against alky, but why does everybody think you can't run gasoline successfully? Lots of people do. You do not have to run a sprint car type system to make it work, either on the street or strip. I completely understand the tuning window argument, I just do not buy the myth that gas can't be run.
The reason I didn't fire the car was because it had been sitting for a few years and I had no idea of what it looked like internally. I am sure glad i didn't do it too. The engine had taken on water through the injector and had a couple of quarts in the pan. A couple of cylinders were rusty and would have wiped out the Venolia pistons. The entire system needed cleaning anyway so I tore it down. I'm not one to wing it because something always goes wrong. As far as the gas thing goes, I would most likely run it if the system were set up correctly. It looks like they didn't really have all of their ducks in a row to begin with.
LOL Methanol doesn't mix well with gasoline. I have never run an injected car on methanol, I have played with injected cars just never on methanol. I have run alchy burners but they were carbureted, we always drained the tank and the carbs then ran gasoline through them before we ever left the track. Aside from being corrosive alcohol absorbs water and is easily fouled, unless your tank is not vented and is air tight it is not going to be pretty after a week or two in a humid environment or semi humid environment. Anyway no help on the alchy injection but for a baseline it takes 3 times as much alcohol to run as gasoline so if no one has an answer you can start there.
I've done it before. lol.. our heads were being reworked in our car after we found the spring pockets hadn't been cut large enough so we had to borrow a car for the first race of the year and the guy had the car jetted way rich. this car was carb'd so instead of messing with his jets and putting them back, we cut the gas with methanol that we had. got lucky that night and managed to pull off a 5th with a borrowed car that we picked up that morning that hadn't even started in a year and sat outside all winter... I've never messed with any injection with the injectors on top.. does it even have a boss for them below?? can't really see in the pics??
Good call on the disassembly. It doesn't sound like the previous owner is of much help so far. That is another in a long line of assumptions we could make. The info needs to come from you.
That nozzle placement for alcohol being different then for gas is a new one on me. Doesn't mean that it isn't right I just never heard of it before.
You obviously need help. Some thoughts: MEOH is a piece of cake to run (nitro Moo-EY different) Meoh is basically 6 to 1 vs 13 to 1 for race gas a little bit of Marvel mystery oil in the Fuel pump and barrel valve will save all I can't think of any reason a fuel pump would be obsolete,,,just not so. unlike most employers race engines don't care how old the FP is! the FP might be too little but not obsolete If it were mine (and I you) I would freshen all up and start it on race gas. If you want to get it to run on MEOH then order up nozzles that flow twice your gas set-up and put a small pill in the return...maybe .050. The only reason to move the nozzels is they might freeze the butterflies when they flash (HVAC). Still not a problem drill and tap the manifold down near the head. Get some help...
I built my own injector manifold for a non HAMB engine. I started with an EFI manifold that had nozzles pointed at the valves. Running it on the dyno on gas it was trash. Switching to alcohol it ran fine. Set a Bonneville record in F/FS. Since then I have taken Rick Enrique's advice and put gas nozzles as far from the valve as I can. But not above the butterfly. Still, I don't know why it wont run with the nozzles where they are. Except for the icing problem mentioned already. And drilling for a lower position is pretty easy.
the only problem i can see with the nozzles above the blades is at idle. the fuel would be spraying at the blade and the fuel would have to get sucked in to the engine around the blade. this probably wont cause a problem at wide open throttle. you have the nozzles for alch. i would just set it up for that. other than the nozzles and possible the pump all the parts are the same. check to see what the barrel valve is. there should be a number on the end that lets you know what ramp is cut at. its on the end that has the slot cut in it. it should be like a 54 or a 56
The Jalopy Journal
