Altitude compensation?

[Gringo Loco Volador]

Howdy Friends,

I bought a VW trike project last year and had a ton of problems with it, but managed to work through all of them and now have an excellent ride!

I just took it on the first long range trip from Kentucky to New Mexico, around the State and then back. I did not have any issues with the engine, except for the altitude compensation. At 5k to 9k feet the carb was super rich and it stumbled a lot when cold. I live at around 550' and have the carb setup for this altitude.

In January or February I am planning on doing another trip to Central America and will be crossing the continental divide a few times, staying at high altitude some and also doing a lot of sealevel riding.

My background is in building light and ultralight aircraft, and we use altitude compensating carburetion to keep the engines runing right at high altitudes. Does anyone know of a kit to retrofit the 34 Pict 3 carbs or of a compensating carb to use on my 1641 engine?

By the way, I tried several new carbs and none of them would work right out of the box. The jetting was way too small for 550' and we had to rejet a lot larger. I do not like the thought of replacing the jets every time I change altitudes, especially so far from home where if anything goes wrong I am screwed. And Murphy's law is always at work.

Thanks for any tips.

Have a good one!
Steve

[vwbug72501]

I'd think that an EFI system would be the way to go these days. Look at the Microsquirt controller for DIY. Check out posts by DeathbySnuSnu. He is building an EFI system for his front engine VW trike. He also has a thread running at the Trike Talk forum.

http://www.triketalk.com/forum/forums/240-VW-Powered-Trikes

I'm going EFI on my trike build.

[BL3Manx]

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1539512

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=410614