6/3/04

For the first couple of years that I drove my Willys, I ran the engine with a Rochester Quadrajet.  If you know how to tune a Quadrajet then you already know that these are really nice carburetors.  They also tend to operate fairly well off-road due to their ability to withstand steep angles.  This carburetor served me well but I could never get my fuel and spark timed as well as I would have liked.  Above 1500 RPMs and the engine was smokin' but below 1500 RPMs and the engine was a less than thrilling.

The Quadrajet gets its reputation for fuel economy from having small primaries.  The small primaries are great for low RPM cruising but tend to provide slow acceleration when taking off from a stop sign/light.  In the area I live in, offensive driving is the norm.  This is the kind of place where using your turn signal lets the other guy know to speed up and not let you merge.  Likewise, when turning from a side street onto a busy surface street one must have some powerful acceleration to keep from getting run over by the people driving at twice the speed limit.  Unfortunately, the large secondaries don't kick in until higher RPMs...but when they do, it's very noticeable!

I was content with this carb until I had listened to enough bragging from my friend Jim about his fuel injection.  I eventually couldn't take the taunting any longer and proceeded to stuff my brain with as much EFI info as I could find.  The story of my EFI swap will eventually get its own separate section in this website.  However, I can sum up the EFI story by saying that it took me about 6 months to research, 1 month to complete the hardware swap, and another 7 months troubleshooting and tuning.