skullandbones

Well, I've had some time to get used to driving the roadster and put some time on the engine. It had it's first oil change last week. I have about 950 miles on it now in various driving situations. I have only done a WOT burst twice so I still can't report on how it really performs as a drag racer. What I have discovered is there is only so much you can do to regulate the performance of an EFI engine without some sort of outside help. That help can come in the form of an electronic after market tuner or a new chip installed by a tuner and professional dyno tune at a shop. There are a couple of things I have not optimized. I still need a fuel pump that delivers the fuel at a high enough rate when this engine is at WOT. I think my last calculation was a 110 ltr/hr was minimal. The stock one is 88 ltr/hr so that is OK for driving but not for performance. I need a measuring device for the fuel rails when I do have enough pressure at the rails. I believe that will have to be removable as I do not want any weak points in the fuel line system that could generate a fire (some gauges have been reported to fail under high pressure). I think the stock donor coil is probably marginal at best as the engine will occasionally miss when pushing throttle quickly. So these are "to dos" before any real performance testing can be done.

Of course, the real question is how much time and self education do I want to spend on tuning this little beast. I know that the Ford engineers in their infinite wisdom built quite a bit of performance in the EM system that can be tapped. I don't know if the reports of "under tuning" are exaggerated or not but there is some evidence that there is a lot of unextracted power to be had with an after market chip and dyno tune. At this point, I am leaning toward that path since my research on DIY tuners indicates a dedication that is too intense for me at this time. I have other hobbies that keep me busy like astronomy and don't need another discipline to master: "expert tuner". So at this point it looks like a trip to AMP (that's our local hot rod shop). They specialize in making Fox body Mustangs go fast. I thought it would be a good match. The dyno will see my roadster as a Mustang as the electronics are the same. The tuner has about 20 years experience with SBF and ford EFI so I'm hoping for a good improvement in performance. I'll report back with some dyno data before too long. See ya, WEK.