Hi all,
After 3yrs of angst, I've completed an engine rebuild including a full aftermarket (NOT Rover) EFI/elec ignition conversion.
At the planning stage I got roughly equal amounts of advice that it could or could not be done.
In the end, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I persevered and now my little beast purrs.
So, yes, EFI on a 5-port head DOES work. NO, charge-robbing is not a problem that cannot be overcome. And YES, it is "a good thing."
Vis: my no-holds-barred 998 is now producing 60bhp at the wheels and I'm a happy camper.
If anyone is interested in my trials and tribulations or some of the tidbits I learned along the way, drop me a line.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a professional, I'm a backyarder and I'll be recommending the professionals who were useful or helpful to me. That OK with everyone?)

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Caring about your job is for people without lives.

I'm interested to find out more....

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"In two years time your car will be like a lady's clothes, out of date, my car will still be in fashion when I am dead" - Sir Alec speaking to Pininfarina

Well done m8. People like yourself makes the Mini scene better and better every day. Please post some pictures and tell the story behind it.

Im very interested to hear more. Have you found a way to solve the siamese port problem? Or did you run a wet manifold?

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Simplify and add lightness

Good on ya drivinglights, of course it can be done. You saw the logic in and went for it, with what I'd say is a pretty good result.

Never mind the naysayers......

These guys have been at it for some years;-

http://www.canems.co.uk/

1018 said:
"I'm one of the very few people in Australia who never "used to own a Cooper S"."

Right On !!!! 1018.

You nailed it.

If owning a Cooper "S" means suffering a three-sync gearbox, wet suspension and a cylinder head prone to cracking, then I'm not interested.

In my mind, a real Cooper "S" is any Mini shell with a 1275(or more) engine, 12G940 head, dry suspension, 4-sync gearbox, good shocks, good tires, 6 inch wheels and 7.5 inch disc brakes. That's all my racer has and it's good enough for me.

Some think that "real" Cooper "S"s are for those slaves to authenticity who think it's cool to pay extra for a car with period correct light bulbs and ashtray in it. I'll prey for them. And pass them on the inside at every corner.

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"it's always better to be uninformed than ill-informed"

Yes it is a good thing. 60hp atw BAH HA HA HA Excellent. Who built your engine?, oh hang on, I remember, A bunch of blokes in your shed with a few eskis full of beer.

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Have a Nice Day.
If already having a nice day please disregard.

Thanks so much for the warm welcome, guys!

In short, the setup is this:
Engine:
998 + 60thou, about 11.1:1 comp. Wade 104 cam. Lightly mod'd 12G295 head with 1.5:1 full-roller rockers. Maniflows and home-made 1 3/4" system.

Electrics:
Wolf 3D computer. Twin coil-pack ignition. Sensors are crank-angle (reading off dowels in the flywheel from a hall-effect sensor under the starter motor); throttle pos. (just a delco unit); air temp (GMH unit); water temp. ;and MAP.
I fitted TWO oxygen sensors but these are only used for tuning on the dyno....more about this later.
Fuel system doesn't run a surge tank; no need to when the Mini tank is vertical anyway. There is a pre-filter and the pressure pump mounted in a custom box in the rear subframe under the tank. Standard fuel line is the return. There is a post-filter (high-pressure unit) in the engine bay before the fuel rail which feeds two GMH LS2 injectors before returning via fuel pressure reg.
Throttle bodies are a pair of single tapered 45/40mm items with ram tubes sitting in a custom plenum breathing from a Honda paper airfilter (don't trust foam ones.)
Manifold is a HEAVILY modified twin SU item. I blanked the balance tube by pressing in a machined alum. dowel into each end and then using a die-grinder to dress the throats. The dowels are drilled with a 1/8" hole to allow the manifold vacuum to be read by a pickup mounted on a boss tig-welded to the centre of the old balance pipe.
The throttle-bods are mounted on weber-pattern flanges tig-welded to the manifold. The whole manifold had the faces machined professionally after all this to ensure flat mating surfaces.

RE: Charge robbing:
It hasn't really been an issue with this setup, however i appreciate that 1275s and bigger breath differently to a 998.
Essentially, the throttle bods work like a more carefully metered weber. The charge for the inner pair of cylinders is being delivered (effectively) just a fraction early and so sits at the back of the valve for an instant. Interestingly, to get good even fueling, the LS2 injectors are maxed at my redline of 6400 - so they're working quite hard.
On larger capacity and turbo 5-port engines in the UK I know they are using the 2 oxygen-sensor trick to track charge robbing. One sensore is mounted in the centre down-pipe of the extractors and the other is mounted just after the 'y' - in this way you can measure the mixture for the inner and outer cylinders separately. Charge robbing is eliminated by programming what amounts to a "scatter cam" - there needs to be slightly different injector timing for the inside pair than for the outside pair. For example (picking figures out of the air) if the inner cylinders receive their injector pulse at 50° BTDC then the outer pair may need theirs at 90°BTDC. Obviously you need BIG injectors to ensure that their duty cycle doesn't impinge on this funky timing.
A side note RE oxygen sensors: Choose the physically smallest one you can find and it must be "wide-band." I used "narrow-band" which really only give an on/off readout. Also, when you want to weld a boss into the extractors to take the sensor, go to a hydraulic-fitting supplier to get the nuts. Sensors are some funky metric / American thread pitch which Coventry and other bolt places will just laugh at. Turns out its a standard hydraulic size, though!

That'll do for a start. I'll post some pics once I figure out how to.

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Caring about your job is for people without lives.

Hi,

it may be worth you looking on the turbominis forum if you havent already,
there are a few guys there running / building efi systems to get around charge robbing.

Thanks, yes. The 2 oxygen sensors and staggered injector timing is pinched from UK turbo forums.

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Caring about your job is for people without lives.

Somebody help me out here. How do I post some pics so people can see what I'm talking about?!

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Caring about your job is for people without lives.

Have a look at this thread , http://www.ausmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10405 basically you need to have them hosted somewhere (any of the free photo hosting sites like photobucket , imageshack etc) and linked to your thread . I use photobucket myself and find it nice and easy though it get's a bit slow at times .

Welcome to Ausmini too , I'm looking forward to seeing your pics

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Is this your car? I saw it at Watto's day out. Wish I had taken a few more photos, Very impressive!

Andrew

That's mine! Nice pic. Shows up the airbox well. Bloody Honda filter is great for the job; right size and big surface area, but the damn things are worth over $50 each! Sheesh!

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Caring about your job is for people without lives.

Found a few more pics:



What coils are they? Been looking for some like that, but hard to find some that are readily available at a reasonable price...

Andrew