[Diy_efi] RE: El Camino carb to EFI/FFV conversion

[John Smith1882]

No, you do not need fuel injection to use E85, but with a carburetor you 
cannot easily nor seamlessly switch between gasoline and E85. You have to 
jet the carb richer to compensate for the  alcohol and doing so would make 
the engine run too rich on staight gasoline. And yes, with quite a few EFI 
systems you can switch between two different fuel and spark maps. However, 
the hard part is being able to use a toggle switch to change between them 
since many OEM sytems use a knock sensor to do that instead. I know the 
early-late '80s Ford 2.3L turbo cars had a fuel switch; one for regular and 
one for premium, that effected the spark advance and boost level. MegaSquirt 
seems to be the best diy option available these days. I tried screwing with 
binaries and roms on a Nissan system(which some would say is simpler than 
GMs) and it is a huge pain IMO. MegaSquirt is hugely flexible, massively 
upgradable, cheap, and easy to use.

In the meantime I would like to know why your EL Camino gets such horrible 
economy......unless it has a big engine and an automatic. What 
engine/trans/modifications does it have? How fast is it usually driven? Does 
the trans have OD?

>Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 20:03:17 -0700
>From: Frederick Trient <gpzmotoman at comcast.net>
>Subject: [Diy_efi] (no subject)
>To: diy_efi at diy-efi.org
>Message-ID: <E5D278B6-457F-4E23-B6A3-979BF26BA1C6 at comcast.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
>At about 11 mpg with an
>Edelbrock 4 barrel carb it's getting pretty expensive to drive.
>Another reason for me to consider f.i. is the possibility of E85 gas
>becoming available. I'm going on the assumption that fuel injection
>is necessary to burn the E85 stuff. Is that correct? If so, it seems
>that it would be possible to switch, on the fly, from mapping for
>straight unleaded gas to mapping for E85 with a box somewhere on the
>dashboard. I'm thinking that it would be necessary to have different
>mapping for each type of fuel.
>Would appreciate any feedback you guys could give me.
>TIA,
>Fred