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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)
Comments: To: Willolyn99@aol.com
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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