Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 14:15:54 -0700
Reply-To: Ryan Alfonso <cyranoleo@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Ryan Alfonso <cyranoleo@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: TiiCo fuel rail story (long long)
In-Reply-To: <43.9aee26f.29e6815b@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hi Bill, et al !
In the interest of being long-winded, and having this
entered into the archives for posterity, I'll tell you
just the basics of the story.
Matthew Pollard and I were having e-discussions about
this a while ago while I was doing the A3 rail
conversion to my TiiCo. He's eagerly standing by
ready to do his own A2 after hearing of my experiences
with the A2.
We've had a bit of convergent evolution on the
subject. Our belief at this point is that you need an
A2 rail with (if possible) both fuel in, and fuel out
ports on the same side of the rail (the firewall
side). Mathew has said he's found them through my
source in Berkeley CA. German Auto Salvage -- really
high quality low mileage used stuff. Complete rail
for between 60 and 80 bucks (by complete, I mean
injectors, FPR, the works).
I went with the A3 rail because the fuel ports were in
the right place and the FPR is of the kind that's
easily switched out for an array of higher pressure
ones from the Passat etc. I thought it would be a
snap to put it in.
Trouble is, the A3 rail is a touch wider in the center
than the A2's. By wider in the center I mean, it's
been made longer by the insertion of about 8 mm to the
center. So it pushes the injectors wide. It fits,
but it'll make you wince a bit if you're as fussy as I
am about this stuff.
There's a picture of the A3 fuel rail conversion on
Peter B's site where Scott Bygd shows pictures of his
Cruise control set up (maroon painted engine bay).
Look carefully and you'll be able to see what I'm
talking about. It's subtle and not an artifact of the
lens.
To accomodate this extra wide seating arrangement, I
had to grind the injector mount down; both posts had
to be shortened becuase vanagon injectors are
physically longer than golf/jetta ones, and the
notches in the flat bar piece of the bracket had to be
widened to allow for the cockeyed alignment of the
injectors (ground out the outside edges).
It works fine. It just doesn't sit well (pun
intended) with me that the injectors aren't perfectly
straight. Seems only a matter or time before the
seals start leaking. Or at least, that's my worry.
Works Great tho', for now.
As soon as I can, I'm getting another injector
bracket, since my current one is AFO'd because of the
A3 conversion (the widened notches I mentioned). I'll
still have to shorten the posts.
But before I do that, I'll see if I can find one of
the A2 rails Matthew found. The injectors line up
perfectly perpendicular to the head/fuel rail.
Most of 'em have an "in" on one side and an "out" on
the other, just like in Peter's pictures on the owners
website. The bugger about that is that if you don't
have the one with both ports on the correct side,
you'll have to route one of the fuel lines all around
the engine compartment, or back along the rail, to
get back to the firewall.
Anyway, to get the whole shebang in there you'll need
to remove the throttle body to give you working room.
You'll also need to either shorten your injector mount
allen-head bolts or get shorter ones. I was a nut and
painted it up after grinding on it. And swap all the
o-rings for fresh ones. And use fresh 7x3mm high
pressure fuel line (VW Part number N 020 281 1 -- BD
sell it).
If you don't prime the rail with fuel before starting,
you'll be in for some rough running for a while (10
min.) until fuel gets into the injectors, but it will
eventually settle down. It's bad form to do it by
this method, but you know us shadetree bubba's...
Then when you're ECU gradually adjusts to it's new set
up you'll start to really feel the difference: better
idle, and better top end power. (or you could just
clear it by unpluggin' it for a half hour, but again,
that's a bubba solution)
That's about all I can think of right now. Lemme know
if'n you've got any more q's.
So, let's see what Matthew, Sean, and the rest of the
gang figure out about the A2 rail set-up...
-R
'89 TiiCo We$tfalia
--- Willolyn99@aol.com wrote:
> "'89 TiiCo 5-sp We$tfalia, with an A3 fuel rail
> (what a
> story that is...)"
>
> OK, what's the story??? I'm using the stock 1.9
> Fuel Injectors and thinking
> of converting -- what have you found? Tell all,
> please.
>
> Bill Marshall
>
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