Cheers Stu.
OK... Took a few days off to get cracking with this EFI conversion. Hiss boo pop bang. Bye bye horror Zeniths!
It was always going to happen that as soon as the time for the conversion got near, the carbs which I planned to replace would suddenly begin running perfectly. And they did. A friend offered me use of his workshop, and the drive down there was just amazing.
But they are fickle little sods, so off they come.
Simple job turned into a massive bitch - mainly due to my custom injector spacers requiring longer port studs. I thought the old ones would come out easily enough, since this side of the engine stays relatively dry and cool. But having done the exhaust studs 18 months ago I should have known that wouldn't be the case.
Got five out after a night soaked in WD40, then Tim my mechanic friend freed five others. I snapped two, and Tim drilled them out (by hand, with an 18V cordless drill - the guy is skilled - as in, skilled enough that the stud thread could be picked from the hole and was the same thickness all the way along).
The other big job was fitting a new high-pressure fuel pump at the front of the car. I opted to jubilee-clip it to the front cross-member - the same place as the feed pump on CIS cars.
If anyone else ever comes across this thread thinking of doing the same thing, make sure you have an empty-ish fuel tank, since doing this on a ramp, above your head, with a 3/4 full tank, will drench you right down to your underpants. Fuel stings your eyes, armpits and man areas a lot, and will make you unattractive to members of the opposite sex. No matter how much you dance around in your fuel-soaked pants, it will still sting mercilessly. A good time to quit smoking, a bad time to learn how to weld.
It took two full days before the intake manifold made it onto the engine, but it looks cool. Have to connect the engine-end of the loom together, fit a pre-pump filter, wire the pump to the relay and work out a way of controlling it without running another wire from the back to the front of the car, and adjust the throttle linkage (too short) and tune the system. So another few days of work...
Took some pictures on my phone:
This is Tim blowing stud swarf out of my engine bay.
My custom injector spacer blocks. I made these to raise the height of the angled injector and so remove the need to notch my intake ports like on a later CIS car. Another benefit is that the CIS intake is raised and the runners don't foul the oil cooler duct, thus removing the need for a later-style CIS engine shroud.
Carbs out, engine cleaned up a bit and injector spacers in place.
Mmm... homebrew gypsy spacers. New longer studs with copper slip to help out the nutter that next plays with the engine in 36 years time.
Can work a spanner, but can't work out colours on a wiring loom.
Where I am at now...
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Cool eh