carburetor to fuel injection conversion? What is involved.

my 87 civic has a carb on it, I'd like to turn it into a fuel injected car possibly. How does one go about it? There are no fuel injected manifolds that will bolt up to the head of the car, I'm considering a motor swap to a motor that has everything on it as far as fuel injection. But I'd need to go from a mechanical fuel pump to electric.

Am I looking for a high pressure or low pressure pump, in tank or exterior tank pump? What is ideal? I'm guessing I should have more then one fuel filter, I'm going to have to run a return fuel line I'm told, is there anything special involved in that?

I'll let somebody else handle the technical aspects since I don't know anything about 87 Civics, but I have to ask you why? I know fuel injection is readily available for my Triumph TR8 but I wouldn't touch it when I can use a Holley 4 bbl. The carb is so much simpler.

It sounds like quite a challenge that might be difficult to sort out, but hopefully a Civic enthusiast can post.

Sounds like it's swap time.

When it comes to Honda EFI swaps, I like to keep it as OEM as possible. They set their fuel systems up really well from the factory.

Type Megasquirt into a search engine and begin reading.

+1 for swap time.

The high pressure vs. low pressure fuel pump doesn't mean a WHOLE lot until you start thinking about making power. Example: Your standard Walbros don't flow well under high pressure loads. Their "HP" line is made to do a bit better.

I'd just be looking for a donor civic or integra or whatever you're looking to dump in there.

What are your goals in this? Just to get rid of the carb? Or are you looking for power?

I have a couple of Spitfire friends who made their own EFI manifolds for their cars. One for the 2.5L I6 and the other for the 1500 I4. They used common aluminum tubing welded together with a spool-gun MIG with 3/8" plate for the head and TB plates. Yard-sourced throttle-bodies were used, choosing ones with integrated TPS and IAC.

The end result looks a lot like the OE EFI manifold that were part of the D-Jet system on our old Volvos.

unless your bent on keeping this car, I'd say sell it and buy something that already is injected. Yeah it's very un-GRM, but if's a DD not a racer, you'll save a ton of headaches.

I'd be looking hard at a B16 or similiar. Since the honda's have fallen out of favour with the youth, parts are everywhere.....

Its the same 87 civic awd wagon, I've had for some time now. I'm really just looking for a little more power, nothing nuts, but more something that will reliably pass emissions. The carb on the car is a poor design, and taking it off I could loose all the evap canisters and stuff as well. They make a downdraft weber for my car, but I will NOT pass emissions with that. I've been looking into a motor swap but even that is rather difficult, there is only 1 year available that will bolt up to my transmission. If I stick with a stock carb, I have the rebuild kit, but not everything is in the kit. To buy a remanufactured stock carb, I'm looking at $700. I'm just trying to find a somewhat easy way to keep the car going, efi seems like a good choice. I'm thinking megasquirt would be the way to go as well, and I have read up on it. Just really trying to figure out what is involved in the carb to efi switch.

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: +1 for swap time. The high pressure vs. low pressure fuel pump doesn't mean a WHOLE lot until you start thinking about making power.

not exactly. fuel pressure requirement is driven by injector type. for example, GM TBIs used around 9 psi, where GM TPIs used 40-ish psi.

AngryCorvair wrote:

92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: +1 for swap time. The high pressure vs. low pressure fuel pump doesn't mean a WHOLE lot until you start thinking about making power.

not exactly. fuel pressure requirement is driven by injector type. for example, GM TBIs used around 9 psi, where GM TPIs used 40-ish psi.

Right, but even a "low pressure" walbro is capable of handling 40psi. It's NOT capable of pushing 80-100psi in an effective manner. Just an example, what i'm saying is certainly not a hard and fast rule.

I've seen 100psi through my fuel system, even though a Walbro 255lph is enough to meet my HP goals, it isn't enough to meet those goals while supplying the pressure i ran. Which is why i got the "HP" version. Which still... isn't that great a high pressures. I've probably bought my last Walbro, but now i'm getting off topic.

digdug18 wrote: my 87 civic has a carb on it, I'd like to turn it into a fuel injected car possibly. How does one go about it? There are no fuel injected manifolds that will bolt up to the head of the car, I'm considering a motor swap to a motor that has everything on it as far as fuel injection. But I'd need to go from a mechanical fuel pump to electric.

There's two options here. One, you could take a TBI unit off an engine with similar horsepower (GM 2.5 Iron Duke, maybe?) and make an adapter. The fuel distribution won't be perfect, we did find one worked better than a carb on our Nova.

Option two, machine your manifold for some injector bungs. (Or maybe cut the runners off and clamp motorcycle throttle bodies to them. That will give you better fuel distribution than a single throttle body.)

Am I looking for a high pressure or low pressure pump, in tank or exterior tank pump? What is ideal? I'm guessing I should have more then one fuel filter, I'm going to have to run a return fuel line I'm told, is there anything special involved in that?

Were there any EFI Civics from this generation where the fuel tank swaps in? If so, I'd get the tank and filters from that.

What kind of emissions testing do they do? Is it just a sniffer or visual inspection too? Why I ask is that I just got my Fiesta to pass emissions and I pulled all the emissions stuff (including EGR valve) off except the PCV valve and the catalytic converter, but they only do the sniffer and visual for the catalytic converter (not under hood inspection) in this part of Tennessee. It's got a header and a fresh catalytic converter, so that may have made a difference. If you're not looking for too much hp gain, a header, free flowing exhaust, and a "better" carb may be all that you need. redpepperracing.com is a great place for those cars if you haven't looked there, they have a "carburetor" section. If I remember correctly, the Canadian market intake and carb worked very well and simplified stuff a lot.

Good Luck.

Dan

In reply to digdug18: The easiest way to do this is to get the whole fuel injection off a 86-87 Civic Si, including the wiring harness, ECU, speedometer, ETC. Therr still would be some issues like the SI fuel injection will not bolt up to the CVCC head. You could swap the head over, but since the SI has pop up pistons and the CVCC are flattops, you would lose a bunch of compression.

Edit I just remembered the distributor would need to be one from a SI also, so you need to swap the head.

The only person I know of who has done this swap is "crxls" on redpepperracing.com.

PA inspection for pre OBD II cars in urban areas is visual and sniffer while the cars runs on a dyno. However, emissions testing in PA is NOT consistent. Where digdug18 and I live, it's more stringent than in other, more rural parts of the state, some of which still have no emissions testing at all. Visual-only... checked by your brother-in-law's uncle... so you know what that means...

One thing I would be concerned about is while it seems you can get MS to run well on an engine, getting it to pass the dyno emissions test required in PA will likely require some dyno tuning time, which when billed hourly can add up quickly. Granted, you should only need to do it once, plus you should be able to save two tunes - one for maximum power or efficiency and one to pass testing.

Plus, you'll need to find an inspection station that will look past the fact the carb has been replaced by something completely different -ignoring the visual part - and test it purely on what comes out of the pipe. Regardless of the fact it may be better and more efficient some testers may fail it at first look.

nymalo wrote: In reply to digdug18: The easiest way to do this is to get the whole fuel injection off a 86-87 Civic Si, including the wiring harness, ECU, speedometer, ETC. Therr still would be some issues like the SI fuel injection will not bolt up to the CVCC head. You could swap the head over, but since the SI has pop up pistons and the CVCC are flattops, you would lose a bunch of compression. *Edit* I just remembered the distributor would need to be one from a SI also, so you need to swap the head. The only person I know of who has done this swap is "crxls" on redpepperracing.com.

The other problem with the head swap is that the timing is off half a tooth, I could bring it back on with a adjustable cam gear but still, even with that I hear horror stories. I'm looking for something reliable.

someone already mentioned it but i'd thought to do it on a yugo in the past... 1bbl TBI (most likely from an iron duke) with adapter... add megasquirt... install a frame mounted pump... igntion is already done for you and i'd leave it as it sits at least until fuel was tuned properly.

but if there was an OEM EFI version it may be easier and cheaper to go that route...

but... prob the most cost effective and labor effective way would be sell the thing and buy one with EFI...

You might want to check out the Holley Pro-Jection. It's a TBI and you would just need to adapt it to your manifold.