Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop 6 Cyl Fuel Injection

I have a great appreciation for old stovebolts in old trucks, but I also have in mind to have an in-line hotrod with a little more high-tech outlook. I guess I was thinking the port injectors would be easier to deal with if using an Eaton super charger. I would rather pressurize air than pressurize air/fuel mix in a home-made plenum / intake manifold. I'll keep turning it over in my head and picking up parts and pieces . . . someday I'll figure out a good clean solution that will get 250 - 300 reliable horses out of a 292.

Ken,
You might want to look at Hot Rod Magazine from a few months ago. This guy had a 292" 6 with a draw through turbo and was running 10.7 sec 1/4's. He had a variable boost guage inside. The mag people said it drove like a semi stocker on the street, and he did drive it to the drag strip, but just turned up the boost to run. BTW it was a 37 Chevy coupe with a home built frame and a Olds rear end. IIRC it was running a T04 turbo drawing through a quadrajet. Just something to think about.
Dennis

Yeah that turbo supercharging is a good suggestion. The intake and exhaust are on the same side making the plumbing easier.No extra drive belts making a long engine longer. Perhaps the parts of a Buick Grand National will adapt.Those Buicks made large HP.I think a non supercharged 292 can give yield 250 hp, on the street with out becoming too lumpy.That story on the turbo 292 is interesting.A famous east coast drag racer has been running 292's for years, sometimes turbo charged.His cars are dedicated dragracers .He has a hard times getting those low ET's. Maybe he is a lousy racer or some one else is stretching the truth.

Holley has one for the 292. Anybody looked at it to see how it handles the ports, etc.?

Hey Tony, I had a black 84 Buick T-type that was 90% GN parts, but then my mom got an 87 GN that was significantly faster. SFI 3.8l with turbo and intercooler . . . 300+ hp out of a 231? cubic inch. She just sold it last year with 140,000 miles on it and it still ran great. The GNX's were the really fast ones though.

So you think a turbo would be a better way to go huh? Always thought a blower would be cool.

Dennis, I'll see how the Holley one looks on the web if I can find it.

I built a turbo 250 nearly 15 years ago for my son's early Nova, and it is still in use. It was pretty simple except for my choice of carbs.

I used the early Buick V6 turbos that were draw through. They were only about $300 new in the box at that time. The Original Buick manifold for this unit had a three bolt flange connected to the turbo. I built a small adapter and used the original 6 manifold. Once the turbo was bolted to the manifold, a 180 degree u-bend pipe was used to get from the exhaust manifold outlet to the turbo inlet, and another nearly 90 degree piece got us out of the turbo and headed back under the car.
Oil was supplied from the pressure sender location, run through a remote filter mounted on the firewall. The idea behind the remote filter was to help insure cool, clean oil. We just punched a hole in the pan an brazed in a fitting for the drainback.
The original turbo 3.8 had two intakes that bolted to the intake side of the compressor. One was for a 2 barrel, one used a q-jet. I choose to use a sidedraft Solex that had the same size throttle blade as the compressor intake. A small adapter took care of the hookup. After making my own needles out of brazing rod, I got the right taper to get enough enrichment when under full boost. The built-in wastegate limited boost to 7.5 lbs. Water injection was added later because my son didn't want to buy premium fuel. I put a Hobbs switch in the intake manifold set to switch at 4 lbs. Ran the power to a windshield washer unit I took off a small pickup. Putting a small brass needle valve in the waterline helped adjust the amount of water blown into the engine. I picked up the brass needle valve unit at the petstore. It was entended for use at regulating the amount of air going into small fish tanks.

All in all, the amount of time spent to turbo the engine was about a day, with another day or two wasted on sorting out the carb. If I had it to do again, I'd find the original carb to turbo intake system. It would have saved a bit of headache, although that carb is still on there without having created any problems.

Greybeard, did you inject water after the turbo? I have heard of people trying in front of the compressor to get good atomization but ran into problems with it eroding the compressor blades.

Ken,

I injected the water in front of the carb. I built a small nozzle into the airfilter housing that was bent 90 degrees and sprayed through the carb directly at the compressor blades. I've not had it apart in all these years, so I'm unaware of any problem with what I did.

If that was a problem, one could avoid it by using a pressure capable water bottle[like a surge tank], and run a line from the intake[power brake tap] to the top of the bottle to help reduce the pressure the pump would need to produce to overcome from manifold pressure. The pressure line for the pump would come off the bottom of the tank to wherever you wanted to introduce the water. I believe there are aftermarket washer pumps. I've seen surge tanks with top and bottom outlets and sight hoses on the sides in Streetrodder outlets.

I purchased a Holley Pro Injection Unit at
an auction. It is a one barrel throttle body
type. It's supposed to work with 250/292 Chevy, 300 F***, 258 Jeep inline sixes.
Don't know as it will improve horsepower
any, but may be a little more responsive than
carb is, maybe better fuel economy.
I need to make an adapter for it. It came
with adapter for Jeep engine.

Hey Ken,

A couple of years ago, Accel had a system with seperate injectors, an adapter you could weld into any intake manifold to mount the injectors, a 90 degree adapter from a standard carb mount into a TPI throttle body. I'm sure they had computers and wiring harnesses as well.

If you're set on building your own (very cool idea, BTW) you might start with one of those kits and modify the 90 degree adapter (or just build your own) so that it was more of a plenum with more volume.