Turbo EFI6

[Frederic Breitwieser]

>will be powering my '70 Mach1.

Kewl, I had one of those, however it was a dual-carb'd 460 :)  This was the
car that confirmed my allergies to carbuerators.

>I've been wondering if I might simply adapt the existing
>EFI parts off a late-model Ford 3.0 V6 to the I6.
>Is this a possibility, or will I be hopelessly lost without
>understanding how to read signal wave forms on a scope?..

Yes.  More than likely.  Maybe.

Whether the engine is an inline six or a V-6, each cylinder fires every
other rotation, in a certain order.  The first concern is to determine the
order on both engines, and move the appropriate plug wire/injector to the
next in order cylinder on the inline.  This is something that has always
left me confused for a little while.

Next, your intake manifold needs to have injectors installed.  You have
several choices - you can make one from scratch, or see if there is an
aftermarket EFI manifold for your engine (unlikely, but I'm making this
advice applicable to other swaps as well).  If not, or you don't want to
buy a manifold, you can bore holes on your intake manifold right near the
heads on an angle, and install bosses to hold the injectors.  There are
companies that sell bosses, and they can be welded, brazed, or stuck on
with JB weld, for example.

Next are displacement issues.  If your engine, and the donor engine, are
very similar in size within a few %, the injectors that come with the donor
engine should be pretty much matched to your engine.  You might have to go
up one size, but you can experiment with that down the road.  You can also
slightly increase fuel flow by increasing the fuel pressure on the fuel
rail - which is nothing more than a fancy name for a tube that goes across
all six of your injectors, connected to the fuel pump.  This is how the gas
gets into the injectors.  You can either make one or buy one.  Being an
inline, more than likely you'll have to purchase the extruded fuel rail
(pipe) and drill/cut it to suit your application.

Whichever your donor vehicle is, make sure you get all the wiring harnesses
past the firewall, and the ECM, this way electronically, its a plug and
play sorta deal from a computer perspective.  You will have to mount all
the expected sensors on your engine block, some might fit existing holes
(oil pressure/water temp sensor locations), but maybe not.  Holes can be
filled and re-drilled or enlarged as necessary.

The trickiest thing to accomplish is the cam/crank rotation sensor.  Most
OEM sensors are off the crank, especially on Ford engines, and you will
definately have some fabrication to an older inline six, no question about
it.  Its a matter of simulating the V6 sensor(s) on the inline six.  It
might be possible to graft the parts over, with some bracketry and
drilling, but it might not.  You'll have to match the engine faces and take
a look at it.

Now, for a throttle body, you have several choices.  More than likely your
intake is for a 2bbl carb.  I haven't seen any aftermarket throttle bodies
that bolt immediately onto the 2bbl motorcraft carb plate, however all is
not lost.  I have two easy choices -

First, you can disassemble your carb, take out all the fuel parts, plug the
fuel jets, screw holes, etc, and use the butterfly (throttle plate) as your
throttle body, grafting the throttle position sensor (TPS) to the
accelerator pedal wire going the carb.  I helped a friend do this, and it
wasn't as complicated as we anticipated.

The second choice is to remove the carb entirely, and mill/make/fabricate
an elbow, which goes from the carb mounting area on your intake manifold,
to an aftermarket throttle body.  To me, this would require a lot of
effort, however I'm sure others will disagree.  Depends if you are
comfortable milling parts from scratch, or epoxying old parts together :)

>I have no interest in buying a solution -- which I can afford to
>do -- I want to enjoy learning and building my own.

These suggestions support leaching an OEM system from a junkyard, and
grafting it to your application.  You also aren't stuck with Ford parts, GM
makes a lot of engines about the size of yours, and you might be able to
ugprade it that way.  Ford tends to make their units less servicable by
soldering the code/data proms onto the circuit boards, where as most of the
GM stuff (at least in the 80's) were in sockets, you could order
aftermarket chips, or if you have the knowledge of the code, you could
lobotomize it yourself :)

HOpe I helped!


Frederic Breitwieser
Bridgeport, CT 06606

Homebrew Automotive Website:
http://www.xephic.dynip.com/

1993 Supercharged Lincoln Continental
1989 HMMWV
2000 Buick-Powered Mid-Engined Sports Car