Mondial 3.2 with Weber carbs reprise | FerrariChat

Mondial 3.2 with Weber carbs reprise

Discussion in 'Mondial' started by snj5, Aug 4, 2004.

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  1. snj5

    snj5 F1 World Champ

    Feb 22, 2003
    10,213
    San Antonio
    Full Name:
    Russ Turner
    It's been a while, so here is the entire saga of the Weber conversion of a 3.2 Mondial; All the adventure, scandalous names from the past, and hard core techno with tons of photos!

    Part 1
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/256120/300846.html

    Part 2
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/307711.html?1062422554

    Part 3
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/310267.html?1063238375

    Part 4
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/317785.html

    Part 5
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/323574.html?1065054048

    Part 6
    http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3057

    Driving the carb car vs a fuel injected car
    http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/337753.html?1067192946


    The dyno runs are out there as well in archive land, but short story is got to 236 rwhp ( about 285 or so flywheel corrected) on the dyno with stock cams and Webers up from about 216 stock.

    Certainly a web-enabled Ferrarichat success story with many folks helping.
    Thanks again especially to Philip Airey and Mark Eberhart among many others.
    best
    Russ
     
  2. mk e

    mk e F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
    12,899
    The twilight zone
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    The Butcher
    Russ, Great project.....I'd almost forgotten how much work you did getting everything just right.

    Anything ever come of the cams?
     
  3. atheyg

    atheyg Guest

    Russ,

    Do you feel it was worth all the work for the conversion for around 20hp?

    I would assume you have greater throttle response with the carbs is that true and what about the rawness and sounds vs FI?
     
  4. snj5

    snj5 F1 World Champ

    Feb 22, 2003
    10,213
    San Antonio
    Full Name:
    Russ Turner
    Jeff
    Absolutely glad I did it. With what I know now you could do the whole carb conversion for about $3 - 4K depending on the manifolds - it's actually quite easy. One of the main reasons behind the carb/single distributor conversion was that the car is now extremely easy and inexpensive to DIY maintain requiring no special tools as well as being much more reliable. The entire Norwood/Mallory Unilite distributor conversion costs as much as two Ferrari OEM distributor caps and parts availability is ubiquitous. (I had single bank ignition failure 3 times with the stock Marelli) Starts easy and runs great. Also doesn't sound like old plumbing when starting up from cold like it did with the Kjet (I always viewed the Kjet, although brilliant, as a piece of emissions equipment anyway). The 20 hp is a kind of bonus.

    The throttle response difference is amazing The sound is incredible. The car lost about 60 pounds in the whole operation as well as really cleaning up the engine compartment.

    As Mark said, the carbs allow easy tuning to run hotter cams. I have had a very difficult time with the otherwise highly reputable vendor I chose, but he says that he will get them to me soon. We'll see. Will probably get the car up to about 300 - 310 hp.

    Bottom line is that it is the car has much more personality, better response and I can do about everything except set the valves. I've always liked the mechanical elegant simplicity and personality of the early Ferraris, and I feel that the engine is happier like this. And so am I.

    jmho
    thanks again to everyone.
     
  5. 1975gt4don

    1975gt4don Formula Junior

    Nov 5, 2003
    665
    Peoples Rep of CA
    Full Name:
    Smog Exempt
    You are a true asset to Fchat. Months ago, I emailed your pictures after the conversion was done to a close friend of mine. He nearly fell out of his chair. I sometimes have dreams at night imagining my GT4 with a 328QV with carbs engine in. Too bad you don't live next door to me, I would only ask that you park the Mondial outside especially at night. I never was a believer in Kjet even back in 80 during the transition. In 83, Ferrari had to go with the QV head just to gain back the missing HP due to smog standards lost since the 75 GT4's, I realize all of this was due to CA smog laws, such a pity. I was a bit bitter Ferrari didn't forsee the HP losses sooner and go with the QV head sooner. No joke about engine accesibility and that is why I absolutely detest turbo'd cars although the HP gain is delicious, the price you have to pay isn't worth the headaches. An EFI system from the beginnning would have made things bearable without having that a**inine fuel distributor covering up half of the engine, one can barely add oil to the car without having to navigate through 50 miles of hoses. *getting off soap box*

    :)


     
  6. mk e

    mk e F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
    12,899
    The twilight zone
    Full Name:
    The Butcher
     
  7. Erich

    Erich Formula 3

    Sep 9, 2003
    1,190
    Poway CA
    Full Name:
    Erich Coiner
     
  8. mk e

    mk e F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
    12,899
    The twilight zone
    Full Name:
    The Butcher
    Well yes and no. They wouldn't have looked for an answer, but there wasn't one to find either. Processor speeds were still too low to make a proper EFI system. Heck in 1980 they had to run 2 seperate boxes to control the electric ignition at the rpm ferraris turn...fuel was out of the question. It's realy only been the last few years, maybe 15, that a good EFI could be built without breaking the bank....anf ferrai had it as some as it could be done. For performance webers still beat the very early systems I think.
     
  9. snj5

    snj5 F1 World Champ

    Feb 22, 2003
    10,213
    San Antonio
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    Russ Turner
    Certainly the early fi applications are pretty interesting. The issue with the mechanical Kjet injection as we've discussed before is flow restriction and the need for milder cams that don't confuse the airmass sensor plate with reversion pulses. Prototype V-6 street Dinos even had a Lucas injection in the late 60s, so Ferrari was looking at FI for the street, but it was just too problematic. Early 70s Porsche 914s and VWs had D-Jetronic, which is an early efi that seems to me would have outflowed K-jet. It's interesting that the european industry as an almost whole (Porsche, Mercedes, Volvo, VW) all migrated to Kjet a few years (Porsche in 73/74) before Ferrari in 1980. The industry then moved similarly to Motronic with Ferrari again following a few years later.
    K-jet is not a performance injection - it is there primarily for emissions control. The flow restriction can be mitigated by forced induction (witness the early Turbo Carrera), but then things get a bit more complicated.

    The Ferrari retro-fitting to Webers is really part of a pretty standard thing when looked at in the larger sportscar world. As usual, the Ferrari world is just again behind a bit. The 2.7 and 3.0 liter K-jetronic 911 community has been retrofitting Webers almost en masse for years (actually my inspiration to do this) and entire commercial kits (PMO) are pretty cheap, extremely well developed and have excellent results. Retrofitting the Lucas injection with Webers on period Inline-6 Maseratis (i.e. Mistral) is considered almost a standard. Heck, Aston Martin had such a bad time with early injection that they even went back to Webers from fuel injection for a while from the factory! So really a Weber retrofit to early injection of any kind is a well worn path and pretty widely recognized good thing to do (like s/s performance muffler replacement almost). This of course does not include the component of Ferrari owners that use their cars to go from show to show to compete for how utterly original they can make it... :)

    And to many of us children of the 70s, a Ferrari without Webers 'is like a day without sunshine' * :)

    The Ferrari V-8 manifold that Frank Capo used to make that I really would have like to have tried was a long runner crossflow (remember early Corvettes?) using sidedraft Weber 40/45 DCOEs like a 365 GTC/4. Can you imagine the torque and sound from that? Wow. There must be some incredible Ferraris tooling around in Oz.

    Couldn't have done it without my on-line buds around the world!
    best to all,
    rt

    Don - many thanks. If I'm such an FChat asset I wish they'd just let me post photos again! :) :)

    * slogan from a 70s Florida orange juice ad
     
  10. 1975gt4don

    1975gt4don Formula Junior

    Nov 5, 2003
    665
    Peoples Rep of CA
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    Smog Exempt
    My bad guys, I had forgotten just how far the microprocessor has come since the early 80's. Your'e right, all car manufacturers were running for cover and the euro car builders especially. I remember those years very well as those were my Car & Driver, R/T, Motor Trend mag reading days as these thoughts are what got me through college. The technology just wasn't there yet in the early 80's, however, it seemed to me that Porsche with their CIS injection was electronic or am I wrong here? The CIS wasn't too shabby of a system except from what I had heard from many 911 owners, was that you can never pump the gas while starting the car---it blows the airbox right off and a good 2K out of your bank acct. Not an FI expert by any stretch of the imagination, so I am depending upon others here.

    Russ, I know the Kjet was definitely the smog nazi driven system to use and was never designed to be a performance based design. Complying with the nazis was #1 and for good reason. BTW, if you ever want to sell your engine someday, look me up :)

    It was definitely a trying time for any SoCal euro car lover in those days.


     
  11. mk e

    mk e F1 World Champ

    Oct 31, 2003
    12,899
    The twilight zone
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    The Butcher
    kjet was the final CIS version and looks just like what you see on porsche and mercedes. It added an O2 sensor to get the mixture a little closer to ideal at idle and cruising.
     
  12. snj5

    snj5 F1 World Champ

    Feb 22, 2003
    10,213
    San Antonio
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    Russ Turner
    Not quite 2K, but certainly an airbox. This happened to my 911SC and afterwards the aftermarket pop-off valve paid for itself many times over...

    One thing Ferrari did right was that METAL plenum on its KJet manifold.
     
  13. miked

    miked Formula Junior

    Feb 7, 2001
    821
    Cincinnati, Ohio
    Here is another option for K-jet cars although it's not for those who don't like to tinker with projects.

    http://www.msefi.com/index.php?c=2
    http://www.megasquirt.info/

    A friend who is an avid autocrosser and import parts business owner has several customers who have converted VW GTI/Jettas with a great deal of success. It might be just the ticket to bring the 80-82 308I up to speed.

    There is also a ignition only version that is on my "projects of the future" list for my GT4. My Ford Ranger uses the same coil pak set-up (the 4 cyl. Ranger has dual plugs per cyl., each coil fires one plug at each cyl.) and by switching two trigger wires I could accomadate the Ferrari firing order. My GT4 still has the original rubber boots over the distributors and my Ranger coil packs might just fit in the boot and make it appear that the engine still has it's factory distributor ignition.

    For "ignition only" click on links near the bottom of the "info" link above, look for additional EDIS info. There are several pages explaining how EDIS works and how to make controllers to install on your own engine.
     

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