Fuel Injection and Emissions

[Mike J. Goode]

I am having a 1776 built to replace the stock 1600 in my '90 Mexican Bug. OG engine runs great, just looking for some more power. My Mexi came from the factory with little in the way of emissions controls-it is carbed and has not cat. My car has failed IL emissions twice (no surprise), so I am looking to install a cat and EFI on the new engine to remedy this problem. A1 Muffler is building me a system with a cat. I am looking for an EFI system for this set up. Several systems are offered-CB Performance, Gene Berg Ent., and Competition Engineering all offer EFI for air cooled VWs. Anyone know who offers the best system in terms of parts availiblity, reliablity, fuel mileage, and emissions? I have heard about people also using water cooled VW CIS systems on air cooled engines-is that really possible? Any info is truly appreciated!

[glutamodo]

I've heard talk of people "wanting" to adapt CIS to the aircooled. Heck, I've thought about it myself. You have to custom make manifolds to hold the injectors, and to mount a throttle body with enough room to mount the fuel distributor/air flow meter. Lots of work but no reason it shouldn't work. Nate at www.aircooledtech.com was working on a conversion for a type 4 block, not sure how well that project is going. Now as far as emissions goes, the late 70's CIS is sort of primitive - CIS with the 02/frequency valve setup, then CIS-E with the differential pressure regulator, then finally the CIS-E Motronic were a lot more sophisticated but VW pushed that technology as fas as they could and went back to AFC (Digifant) in 1988 or so.

As for the other type of aftermarket EFI, I have no experience with them, hopefully someone here can steer you in the right direction.

By the way, what are the standards that the state of Illinois tests to for your car?

andy

[Bruce]

I would not use CIS. Although it worked good in its time, it is not as good as today's technology in EFI.
For your components, I would suggest you buy the factory VWof Mexico EFI parts like the manifold, injectors and throttle body. This will allow you to use a stock air cleaner and you will be able to plug in temp sensors and TPS sensors with ease. If you don't use the stock VW electronics box, you can use several aftermarket boxes like the SDS, or Megasquirt. Whatever system you pick, make sure you use something with an O2 sensor feedback.