what do you think of carbs for rally cars?

mellow65 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
but you just
> can't beat the pure easiness of slapping a carb on
> running a hot wire to your coil and starting it
> up. doesn't get much better then that.

Now you're getting it. My Opel has like 6 wires in the engine compartment, 4 of which are the spark plug wires. How many does your Subaru have? I'm exaggerating, of course, but not much...

Doivi Clarkinen Wrote:
> How many does your Subaru have?

you don't want to even know. i have torn down 3 subaru harnesses to work as a stand alone harness and those were no fun. they all worked, but still, no fun what so ever.

it's all just a hair brained idea at this point for a future rally car. and would be made so much simpler by doing a carb rather then trying to make a FI harness work.

well not unless it was a subaru, but as of now, that's not legal.

---

"Rally racing makes a heroin addiction look like a vague craving for something salty"

mellow65 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Doivi Clarkinen Wrote:
> > How many does your Subaru have?
>
> you don't want to even know. i have torn down 3
> subaru harnesses to work as a stand alone harness
> and those were no fun. they all worked, but
> still, no fun what so ever.
>
> it's all just a hair brained idea at this point
> for a future rally car. and would be made so much
> simpler by doing a carb rather then trying to make
> a FI harness work.
>
> well not unless it was a subaru, but as of now,
> that's not legal.
>
>
>
> "Rally racing makes a heroin addiction look like a
> vague craving for something salty"

You can put a carb on a Sube in Open classes.

I dislike Holleys for much the same reason as you. Carter/Edelbrock/Weber are great. Open box, install carb, set choke and idle mix and fogidaboutit, at least on most V-8's. I had to do some tinkering on the L20 Datsun though but once jetted correctly the carb worked great.

heymagic Wrote:

>
> You can put a carb on a Sube in Open classes.
>

no like putting a subaru motor in something else just because i know i can tear down a harness and it will run.

---

"Rally racing makes a heroin addiction look like a vague craving for something salty"

Well - to me history speaks for itself - carbs have been in use for rallying for a long time, so obvisouly they will stand up to the abuse.

There will be wear and tear as usual, but that is not much different from what you will see on an FI engine. It's just different places...

Carbs will get wear on axels, jets, etc.
FI will get wear on axel(s) as well, an the injectors get worn over time too.

Not much more robust - just different, and it'll take for ever...

I used to have twin DCOE's on both my Opel Ascona, Opel GT and my Ford Escort Mk II - so I've been around carbs....

But now I run FI (MegaSquirt) for my ITB's - I get the sound of the twin DCOE's and alike, but the ease of FI (to me).
The FI will allow much easier fine tuning of stuff like cold start, fiddling with subtle changes (like wear and tear), small adjustments to timing, etc.
I don't have to have a boat load of jets for carbs lying around, intricate knowledge of how changing one jet might affect something that I need to change another jet to counter, etc.
Regardless of the car, setup, etc., I just crack open the laptop, and can much easier tune on the road.

Once setup, I don't touch it obviously - and that's not much different from carbs.

But apart from that, I see a couple of advantages to FI over carbs:

- Better cold start and alround drivability.
- Easier setup/tuning - much easier adding a bit of fuel to an area in the map, while on the road. This is opposed to carbs where you have to pull over, stop the engine, pop the hood, get to the jets, changing it (not to mention selecting one from tiny letters on the side of a tiny little brass thing-a-ma-bob), avoid dropping either the new or the old on the road side for it to disappear for ever.
- Next to no maintenance. Carbs don't need rejetting on regular basis, but for twin, tripled or quad-setups, you often need re-synchronising (at least this is true for twin DCOE's). I often had to do this once a month on my daily drivers. This due to the flexible mounts they need. My ITB's are 4 separate units - but bolted down tight - no resynchronising necessary.

In my experience there are no problems with connectors for aftermarket ECU's - and I run one of the supposedly worst: MegaSquirt with SUB-D connector, and have been for several years now.
Obviously one needs to know what one's doing - but the same is true for carbs.

A different way of saying what Bottles said: either way you need to know what you're doing. Know your fueling system. For some carbs are easier, they will get better results with carbs. For some (me) FI is easier...

---

Brgrds
Brian

I have Dellorto's in my Golf. I was planning itb's and sem, but the carbs and ignition system fell in my lap for a good price. Seriously, that's what it came down to....they were immediately available, so I thought I'd try it.

The biggest challenge with the carbs wasn't the setup, tuning, etc, it was the game of Tetris I had to play to get them to fit...move the rad, relocate the alternator, find a different coolant fitting for the head, fab new alt bracket, now the alt interferes with the oil cooler lines, and the new rad position requires and new oil cooler location, twist the rad hose in there somewhere......and it goes on like this.

more power?? I don't know, I think maybe my carbs are too small (38mm chokes), but 1/2 the fun for me is the tinkering in the garage. I'll likely change it all again at some point. It does sound cool though...