Thunderstruck27

You both have some really good points, but you're a little off on the details. In the south they have old rusted "ice-boxes", not refrigerators and they keep them on the front or back porch, not in the yard. The baptist don't have a problem with "fowl" language as long as it's done at a "cock" fight. However most southerners do know better than to end a sentence with a preposition.

JasonSmith

True, Whipple needs more fuel & true one way, arguably better to get that fuel is to open up the pulse-width and fuel supply of the factory injectors or replace the factory injectors with ones capable of adding more fuel while staying under an 85% duty cycle.
Recalibrating an ECM is not easy work and code can be corrupted, however small the chance.
Very true that nothing inside that ECM can be changed. It can only do what it was designed to do, which is read & hold parameters. Liken it to only so many square pegs, only so many round pegs. You can't make a MEFI sequential fire. You can make it understand 2bar vs 1 bar map sensors. You can disable alarms and functions you can adjust pulse widths, timing, when the to trigger alarms, etc. One thing you cannot however do is MAKE ONE SIDE RUN RICHER THAN THE OTHER!
As far as programmers available for $200 knowing what I don't. My answer is they know how to undervalue themselves in terms of what their time is worth to provide a service. What I am 1000% sure of is why I don't do this for a living. People like you...the general boating public who knows it all.

stevesxm

and your potential clients are well served by that

larry da outlaw

just my 2cents. i was cleaning some dirt or oil from my valve cover when I accidently leaned on one of the injectors, i felt something move but did not think much of it. well quess what happens next ... I start having a rich condition on one bank (just like u r) I scanned it only to find no codes were triggered...as usuall! what I found was that when I leaned on the injector I accidently broke the connector on a fuel injector but not all the way off. this simply created an open condition. this can be checked by ohming out the injector. mercruiser standard injectors pn 861260t will read 15.7 ohms. if it read open ....its bad. if it reads +/_ .5 ohms from 15.7 ohms.... change it. if its shorted change it. these values are critical. what happens is the ecm reads the tps sensor and sees the thottle moving fwd. (as well as other things) then the ecm starts the next steps the fuel mapping tables. the ecm then checks on the rpm and map sensors to check that "all is well" in this case it saw that the rpms are down (among other things ) and does the only thing the ecm is programmed to do....dump more fuel to correct this problem. all because an injector is not working. so do an injector check. it fast and simple. you dont know how many bad injector issues I have to trouleshoot for people because of the famous "black soot coming out of the exhuast" , engines running rich, tansoms turning black after use, tachs fluttering 100 rpms or engine not making power above idle....the list goes on.

winkman

Thank u so much!!! I will do the check on Sunday!!!

larry da outlaw

by the way....chickens dont nest in boat engines, pelicans are the usual sespect!!!!

ezstriper

and this class is how easy it is to deal with EFI on modifyed setups....

stevesxm

well... it's assumed that scarcasm is meant with a smile but the truth of it is that, like anything else, even carbs, knowing what you are doing is always the key. in the hands of someone knowledgeable in both areas of expertise, an apples to apples
direct comparison between carbs and efi will be won by efi at every level. the single area that carbs win hands down in every way is end user serviceability. a bozo with a claw hammer can take a spare carb out of a box and swap out his old one and , if that was the issue then the problem is solved for 250 bucks in 15 minutes. certainly that's not the case with efi. but i would argue that again, like all things, if the job is done right the first time then the reliability will be there. my experience with injection goes back to the beginning of time with the mechanically metred systems on the original cosworths thru the most recent electronics. in my opinion a good , programmable electronic engine managment system , executed to suit the environment it operates in is always going to be the answer. the problems arise when trying to use things where they shouldn't. car stuff in boats. unsealed connectors, twisted or crimped connections instead of soldered ,sealed and heat shrunk. with a carb you don't have those issues. then again there was a thread a week ago where the guy couldn't get the fuel line on his holly to not spew gas all over his motor and some other person not only as bad a mechanic but stupid as well told him to just smear it with silicone and tighten it some more...

so its always going to be a a forest gump deal. "stupid is as stupid does" the guys reflashing ecu's with "one size fits all" code that they cook up in their dreams are no more or less stupid and wrong then the guys putting their power valves in upside down.

my 502's were factory injected. they ran flawlessly without any issue what so ever for 3 or 400 hours with no maintainance or repair. sometime later i put two injectors in. compare that the guys around me with carbs. once a month... smoke, slow, backfires, carbs on carbs off screwing around... non stop. maybe they were just bad at it... who knows. but ill take properly installed and programmed injection any day given a choice.

ezstriper

yes, was meant with a smile from the other thread on switching from EFI to carb...on a stock setup they do work ok...in most cases...but mercs system has a few issues...the looped fuel return is not good, should have done a return to the tank, this also helped the vapor lock that many experiance, then the cool fuel was a bandaid for that....helped..but some still have the vapor lock even with their fix...also they seem to run the system very rich, a safety deal I'm sure...but to the point many have black sooty transoms from this, and like I said just do serious mods to the engine and then get it right...yes can be done..but at what expense and what will you gain over a well tuned carb ??

stevesxm

funny you mention the fuel loop and caught me in a lie immediatly. i saw that issue the instant the motors arrived and did in fact change that to , essentially what yo say. i created a fuel accumulator that a lift pump fed that returned to the tank so that the fuel sytem always had a gravity feed unpressurized 2 quarts to draw from and sent the fuel return back to the tank as well. so when i say i left it stock, i didn't. i understand why merc did it for packaging reasons but it was still a mistake as you pointed out.

but beyond that, each point you make applies to carbs as well. vapor lock is nothing more than the fuel boiling in the lines... a temp issue. its the same issue that affects carbs the same way. the solution is to keep the under hatch temps down to something less than the surface of the sun. on my boat after i first got it up and running, it wasn't particularly fast but ran ok... so i get to pinel island after running it wide open for 25 minutes and open the hatch to look around and the intake manifold must have been 200 degrees... hmmmm i said. so i worked very hard at a system to get fresh air in and out of the engine bay and suddenly everything was faster, sharper and better in every respect. is that an injection issue ? no. its an infrastructure and installation issue and i think its important not to confuse the two. you have to own technology that you can maintain. if carbs are at the limit of your ability to deal with and you have no access or interest to anything better than that then that's your answer. but if you have the willingness to learn the operation and have access to someone that understands what is necessary or willing to buy the manuals and tester to do the minor stuff yourself then you are better served with efi.

if i still had my shop and my dyno and wanted to build motors for my boat, i would build nice sharp, 9:1 540's, with any one of correct programmable engine managment systems available in the racing aftermarket. then i would do the fuel and ignition maps on the dyno, use mil spec connectors on everything and fully expect that motor to run flawlessly for a very very long time. but you are correct in the sense that if you build the motor at home and then rely on someone to program the ecu over the phone and use some system made up of cobbled together pieces then yes... a carb is going to MUCH MUCH better.