Michelotto 308 @ Spa.........

I'm not "converting" my 308 but I know people who made Michelotto conversions.
Even the most extreme and expensive ones are not identical to the originals Gr.B or Gr.4.

The issue with the Kugelfischer, provided you have a complete setup to start with, is to get the cams right and it's trial error meaning make new cam, mount, bench, dismount, retry. On top a cam working well on one car is not guaranteed to do the same on another. It was never a "good" injection anyway, mostly on/off, just new stuff and the hype was due to novelty more than performance. The Stratos demonstrated that. It was better performing on carbs and more reliable.
I understand that people who own original Michelotto cars with it would like spares but those converting should definitely go for the carbs.

The 288 used a Weber-Marelli FI, IAW I think.

 

It was actually a little old lady's apartment next door to his, when she died/moved he knocked the common walls down and pushed it over...

It WAS a nice chandelier!!! LOL!

 

yes they are *****ing period correct cool! basically most operated as a driven jerk pump much like a hi-pressure diesel and are constructed like mechanical jewels internally. not really for the weekend hobbiest to mess with. ive learnt my lesson

good points on the the tuning aspect. i have a modify MFI spica HP pump and it takes an eternity to dial them in with the trial an error method. changing jets and venturis on a weber make much more sense for the club guys and privateers. factory back racing outfits usually had a whole crew with bunch of pumps to swap in and out depending on the application during the races.

webers are proven and effective but i will have to disagree with you on the power ,performance or "hype" thing. all things being equal the MFI car will make more power especially at peak RPM's due to the fact there are no venturi chokes or aux tube in the intake track. now to dial them in to the required needs of the motor... well thats another matter. there is a reason why nearly all the factory race teams (Alfa, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Ford, Jaguar ect...to name a few ) of the late 60's to early 80's replaced the antiquated webers with a MFI. they are also horribly expensive for a manufacture to put into production vehicles and difficult for the dealers to service. porshce did a lot of them with the long nose cars with the E, S and RS variants and id say they weren't hyped cars. the last production car that i recall of that ran MFI was the BMW M1 and the porsche 3.0 RS-SC in circa 80 and 84.

yes most arent identical for pretty good reasons... i reckon you have priced a 10 or 12 inch campy coffen spoke in decent condition. even the technomagesio are 3-5k for one wheel if you can find them. i dont even want to think of about KF or all the supplement eccentric cams profiles that you need to to tune the thing.

i dont think the guys who go through the trouble of building accurate replica of a GR4 michelotto are just after the ultimate set up. they midas well stick a set of 20" dubs on there too and some glossy 6 pot calipers if so! of course the modern EFI are superior in nearly every way but surely if the KF MFI were ready available they would be utilized instead. my hats off to the couple of F-chatters that got there GR4 cars as accurate as they did. its a monumental task to do one remotely convincingly. i cant imagine building one if compomotive didnt replicate coffin spoke wheels for the stratos crowd.

cheers

hf

 

Well as you see all the cars you state are track cars. Driveablility is not an issue. The fact that the Kugelifischer is mostly on/off is not a big issue on a track car that is more or less intended to be on/off. However on a rally car you are mostly looking for torque availability throughout the rev range and in this case the MFI of the time were vastly inferior to Webers. So overall on a twisty mountain back road you would struggle to get the car to the top with a Kugelfischer whilst you would be having a hell of a time driving the Weber equipped car and you would be smashing the MFI's car time.

 

not an accurate statement again. the stock street BMW M1 came wtih MFI as well as the alfa montreal and all fed 105s gtv, duettos/spiders berlina from 69-74, 911 E, S of 2.2 and 2.4 not to mention the RS 2.7 3.0 carrera, BMW 2002 tti, Aston Martin DBSV8 .... are all street cars. i have driven the MFI 911 2.4, alfa montreal and ton of 105's plus the 2002tii kugelfischer MFI cars and they have no "on-off switch" syndrome which you are describing. im just suggesting be careful with grand statements.

....however you do have a point on part throttle response and low RPM running. period MFI car are more adapt to the circuit. i believe the MFI are more difficult tune through out the rev range not to say it cant be done. weber like most carbs have an accelerator pump to compensate for abrupt throttle inputs. to the best of my knowledge the spica dosent have this logical system in pump. then again i driven or owned weber cars with much too big TB and venturis in search for the few extra hp on the top end and yes the driveability on those were also awful !

respectfully

hf

 

Useful info. I was about to post that the 288 GTO was never intended for the rally scene. It should've battled with the Porsche 959 on the track.

 

just as the 308 and bmw m1 wasnt intended as a rally car as well?

 

They indeed were not purpose built for rallying. The 288 GTO was a factory effort built for group B racing, not rallying. And to be honest, the M1 wasn't a very good rally car. The 308 was never going to be considered a serious threat to the real rally cars either, but it did quite well considering. In any case it wasn't a full factory effort either (but close, with Michelotto).

 

Something I was contemplating yesterday while tinkering in the shop was building something that look liked a KF pump with electronic fuel injectors.

I don't really know what the point would be other than the fact it would look cool and hardly anyone would know that it wasn't real (I think). I worked on an alcohol injection system on a V6 that made 1000 hp at 100 psi boost. I sourced some solenoid valves that were mounted upstream of the actual nozzles which were installed right above the velocity stacks. One of the issues was the pressure build up between the solenoid and the nozzle which needed some "head" to atomize the fuel but that worked against the solenoid opening and closing time. I'd have the same issue mounting injectors/solenoids remotely from the injection point but there might be way more sophisticated solenoid valves than what I got the opportunity to play with back in the late 80's ... I wonder if I could just cannabalize the end of a standard Bosch style injector? ... anyone ever done that? ... and mount the nozzle up at the actual injection point?

Anyway just had to share that and get it out of my head ... I figured might as well put a mechanial fuel pump in the unit so the cog drive isn't fake .

I built some intakes for 308's that take Suzuki Hayubusa throttle bodies ... if I did that again I'd probably make proper flanges for the intake runners vs. just using the rubber boots ... it was my first complicated aluminum TIG job though so I didn't want to get over my head . It was a cool thing to do and depending on how much power that motor ends up making I might do a second generation with flanges ... maybe use Ducati TB's or modify the Busa's so they don't look mass produced.

The KF pump has become very interesting to me because they don't exist and I've been making some really tight tolerance parts & mechanisms for work ... it's made me appreciate what can be done mechanically. I've done tons of software development and robotic controls and EFI is very much an extension of that ... these precision mechanisms are really cool to analyze and understand.

cheers