Hi Dean and thanks for taking a minute to reply.
I stumbled across that link last night - the Speeduino it's called which
uses the Arduino platform as an ECU with some help from an add-on board. I
like the fact that it costs less than megasquirt (MS), but I didn't see as
much support for it online and for a newb, we rest on the shoulders of
giants - aka needing help. Any project you embark on for the first time is
fraught with fears of the unknown so the more help you get the more
enjoyable it becomes to learn.
I would also advise you to change to the alternator, but give up on the idea
of electric heat. If your PA winters are anything like here, you simply
cannot ever get enough BTUs to do any good. One of the best things you can
do for heat is to figure out a nice way to install bilge pump fans or some
kind of 12VDC dual squirrel cage fans in the back luggage area as intake
fans which will take the air from the passenger compartment and route it
through the firewall to your heater boxes and subsequently back into the
car. The heater boxes have plenty of heat, but the letharic pressure due to
the siphoning arrangement back on the fan shroud barely gets any of the heat
into the bug. Use 1 7/8" freeze plugs with hose clamps to block the fan
shroud outputs off and in fact, if you want to focus on better cooling for
your engine, remove the heater outputs and just weld a flat plate over the
hole to help streamline the air going to the cylinders. If your idea of
switching to an alternator is to run electric fans on the input side of the
heater system, it's justifiable otherwise don't even bother because you'll
be upset at how pathetic 12VDC heaters are.
The next step would be to locate a Stewart Warner gas heater, rebuild it,
(converting from 6v to 12v is a piece of cake - just wire the pump and fan
in series on a 6V unit), and install that. Those are the only 2 ways to get
bonafide heat in a bug without going with some kind of auxiliary propane
heater.
At any rate, if someone wanted to extoll the virtues of the speeduino
system, I'd be all ears as the price certainly is interesting!
For right now, I'm working on what I need to do in order to convert a Type 1
engine over and a future Type 4 project.
What I'm finding out is that no one makes a center fed manifold for Type 4s.
When going FI, they just hook linkage to both sides and I don't want that.
It appears that I would need to get some manifolds that are meant for dual
single bbl carburetors and then fabricate an intake system where all I would
need is one throttle body to control it all. No dual-anythings to have to
sync. On the DRM conversions, it doesn't appear there is room to put a
sizeable intake between the alternator and the shroud like on the Type 1
engines. So I've already been envisioning running an intake tube over the
top and down and then just doing an updraft setup. It almost sounds like
I'm plumbing for a turbo. :)
Anyway, that's it for now. Anythink I learn about FI, I will gladly share
here and then Dave can chime in and correct me when I'm wrong thereby
guiding down the FI path.
NQ
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