The Cal-look Lounge

It's been pretty close to a year since the Programmable CB injection system was installed on my wife's daily driven 66 Ghia Convertible. Since I got a request here to share insights on it, here it is.
The installation was covered on my website and here is the direct link
http://home.comcast.net/~mlawless29/cbefi.html

We installed it on the K-Roc built 1776 initially. Since this was a protoype model and no complete installations on a customers car had been made, nor were there they any instructions ( I was writing the instructions based on my installation), we did have some level of difficulty which were resolved on the final version. Most of the difficulties we did encounter were problems with the car itself as well as an incompatibility with the standard Bosch "Blue Coil".

Once installed and running, the unit pretty much "self-tunes" regardless of which fuel map is installed. We did have to make some manual tweaks at the low end of the scale to eliminate some off idle flat spots, as it wanted to tune to a much too lean condition. Easy stuff with the "Dashboard" software.

The biggest drawback we encountered was the use of 48mm throttle bodies on a 1776 with very mildly ported heads and stock sized valves. There was no hesitation, but rather the least amount of throttle opening made it really want to take off and thus made "parking lot" driving conditions difficult. This could have been easily resolved with either smaller throttle bodies or a single TB. Cindy liked to look, so it stayed that way. I reckon some things are more important that drivability!

We did a coast run last summer (300 mile round trip) as well as a 600 mile round trip to Ventura for the Karmann Ghia Parts & Resto's KG Treffen. With the over AFR set at 13.5-1, we carded 33mpg average, with a best of 35 on one segment and as bad as 29 on another. The entire trip was smooth and trouble free, although it did run warmer than it had before when it had Kadrons on it, hitting 230° oil temps climbing the grapevine with outside temps hovering close to 100°. Adjusting the AFR could most likely bring the temps down. Even so, without the guage, one would never know the motor was running warm based on it's behaviour. It never missed a lick and ran smooth all the way.

Recently, I installed a new 2165 in the car. Or at least it was a fresh 2165 as it had previously served as the race motor in the Blue Car years ago. Detuned with 8-1 compression and a very mild CB cam (with no part number, so I can't even tell the specs on it, other than to say it's less than .400" lift at the valve). The CB injection seems to be much happier on the bigger motor. Running around Southern California for the Pre Classic activities, we had no difficulties and this particular combo ran much cooler, never seeing anything over 195° oil temps. Overall drivability is excellent. On the first weekend of July, we will be heading down to Southern California from Clovis, in Central Cal just for a cruise down the Pacific Coast Hiway, and well see how the bigger motor handles hot weather and climbs.

What I like about the system is that anyone with mechanical ability can buy it, install it and be up and running in a weekend. It's totally tuneable if one so desires, or if not, it will tune itself.
One of the things I wish I had done differently is use a standard fuel pressure regulator with a return to tank line. We installed with a fuel pressure sensor which tells the ECU what the line pressure is, which in turn, varies the voltage to fuel pump to regulate the line pressure. It seems to be a little finicky sometimes with regards to starting the car as the key needs to left in the "on" position for a few seconds while fuel pressure builds. It also causes the fuel pump to run hot when the car is idling for a long time. I will change that out for the conventional type regulation scheme soon. The advantage of the returnless system is that it can be installed on a car without having to install a fuel return line.

Very good info, Mike
And I like the word “finicky“, never heard that before :-)

How much does a whiz-bang setup like that run??

Great info Mike...!  8)

Here in the US Rick, I believe around $2200 complete.  Box and harness are also available separately.

Thank you very much for sharing this Mike ! Pls keep posting about youre experiences with the CB System. I'm thinking of using this system on a 2770, T4 engine .

Thanks Mike.. CB Doesn't seem to list prices on their site.