My mega squirt install

Army of Six

Well-known member
So i bought an old 67 Econoline so me and my family (6 of us total) can all pile in and head to the beach whenever we want. It had a bone stock 240 cu 1bbl with a manual choke and a C4 automatic. I got so tired of trying to start that 240 on a cold (by southern California standards :) ) with the manual choke. I rebuilt the carb but could never quite get it dialed in. on top of that it was a bitch for my girlfriend to start (hot or cold)

anyways, i have messed with fuel injection with my old GTO so i knew what i was getting into.

this post is just how i went about it, maybe it will help someone down the road.

Here is what i started with...

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and here is what i ended up with....

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basically with the help from you guys here on this forum i found out that the 1987 fuel injected manifold will fit the 67 240. that seemed like the easiest way/cheapest way of doing it as opposed to getting a single plane aluminum 4 bbl intake and having bungs drilled and welded in and having a custom fuel rail fabbed up. i scored this 87 4.9L lower intake on ebay for under 20 bucks shipped!

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because of the small engine compartment in my 67 econoline i had to shorten the intake runners. the masking tape you see is what i had to take out to make it fit. all the runners lined up pretty good. just minimal porting with a dremel tool to clean them up..but the funky dog leg in the number 1 runner needed alot more time with the dremel to get it right.


here is a pick of the newly cut and welded up 10 dollar e bay manifold during mock up...

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i didnt think that i could get the matching upper intake to fit under my little engine compartment hood so my plan was to fab up my own upper intake plenum out of mild steel. i bought a 3/8th inch think cold rolled steel and had my friend bore out the 6 intake runner holes. i then cut up some mandrel bends to form the top and sides and then welded in the sides with 16 ga sheet metal. then i fabbed up and welded the throttle body base and neck to the upper plenum. i took my time welding but it still warped the flange so i had to have it milled to flatten it out.

here is a pic during fabrication...

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here is another pic from the back side....

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as for the throttle body i bought on for a 3.9L dodge or something. i wanted to make a nice cold air intake so cut up some 3.5 inch and 3 inch mandrels. the air cleaner sits pretty much behind my drivers side front tire. ( i still have to make a shield to protect it from water/debris) here is a pic of that (the electric fan is for my oil cooler)

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i will post more (with pics) of the fuel system, ECU and wiring tomorrow.

Vic
 
Looks good. The wife getting the car started is likely going to be my motivation to do the mustang. So far its been fine so the parts are just on the shelf. My Cadillac lost oil pressure in the fall so have not been messing with the MS but I did have it running pretty good.
 
yep, i remember the first time my girlfriend had to drive it by herself. i had to write down the cold and hot starting procedures on a piece of paper. a couple hours later i get a call from her saying that she cant get it started. turns out she flooded the hell out of it. i was able to talk her through it but still a pain in the butt. i am not going to miss that Holley model 1940 manual choke 1 barrel.


some updates.

the upper intake plenum was buckling at idle, the vacuum at idle was so great that the walls would actually cave inwards an 1/8 th an inch or so. it distorted the so much that the throttle body was moving. so i pulled it off and drilled 5 holes 1/2 inch in diameter along the center of the upper. i then welded in 1/2 inch OD tubing to stiffen the walls up. i was afraid that in time the metal would fatigue and crack. here is a pic, it kind of looks like bullet holes..it seems to have worked.

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here are a couple pics and details of the fuel system.

i used existing line out of the fuel tank and ran it to an external inline fuel EFI fuel pump. it then used some 3/8th aluminum tubing to the engine compartment to a piece of stainless braided flex hose to the inlet side of the fuel rail..

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the fuel rail is a stock Ford EFI rail (another 10 dollar ebay special) because of the shorten intake runners the stock inline fuel pressure regulator had to go. which is fine because i plan on throwing some boost at it later down the road with a turbo so i needed a good 1:1 fuel pressure rise regulator. so i simply cut the fuel rail and welded on a -6 mild steel AN fitting to each end. here is a pic from the front of the motor. the 180 degrees AN fitting is heading to the areomotive fuel pressure regulator near the back of the engine compartment.

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from the regulator i ran a rubber hose and tapped into the old stock fuel line to get the returning fuel back to the tank. i didnt want to pull the gas tank and mess with welding on it (i kind of like my eyebrows the way they are) so i drained the tank (by simply turning on the newly installed EFI fuel pump.) with in minutes the tank was pretty much empty. i thought the easiest thing to due was to weld a return fitting to the detachable fuel filler neck. 3 sheet metal screws and a hose clamp later it was out and i welded it up...

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Vic
 
what a cool project! that's great that you could reuse so many late model parts. What happened with the mega squirt?
 
mega squirt......well, i have to say i like the holley commander 950 better it is alot more user friendly. but the price is right on the mega squirt.

just took it for its maiden voyage today. still trying to get it dialed in. its a good thing they have a good forums. one problem is that i seem to have a miss which i think is giving me a false lean condition. so tomorrow im going to give her a good tune up and then go from there.

another problem that i had right away. (and had the same problem with the 66 pontiac) was that when you have and almost empty tank of gas the pick up in the tank will grab air as the fuel sloshes around. not that big of a deal with a carb but you have to have a solid fuel supply with EFI. so i may be making and installing a surge tank. but first i have to get it running well (and keep the tank above 1/2 tank :)
 
Army of Six":37oh05c0 said:
...the upper intake plenum was buckling at idle, the vacuum at idle was so great that the walls would actually cave inwards an 1/8 th an inch or so. it distorted the so much that the throttle body was moving. so i pulled it off and drilled 5 holes 1/2 inch in diameter along the center of the upper. i then welded in 1/2 inch OD tubing to stiffen the walls up. i was afraid that in time the metal would fatigue and crack. here is a pic, it kind of looks like bullet holes..it seems to have worked.

Clever, and yes, that does look like it ought to work pretty well.

Good job!

:)
 
thank you shmoozo.


just an update, i found the cause of my bad miss. i figured out that one of my ebay special refurbished fuel injectors is bad. No. 4 is a dud. i can pull the wire connector off of it and it runs exactly the same. i did a current check on the exposed plug to verify the wiring is good and got the same readings as the no. 1 injector while it was running. that old 240 kept a pretty good idle while only running on just 4 cylinders.

so just ordered some NEW injectors from Summit.
 
If you use a surge tank it will solve the problem that you have when your tank gets low, you need two fuel pumps though. One has to be a low pressure one that you would us for a carbutator (stock mechanical) to feed the surge tank and then your high pressure pump that is fed from the surge tank. There is a piece of pipe inside so that the high pressure pump sucks fuel from the bottom and any air is blead from the top and goes back to the tank in the return line. This is the setup that I have on my falcon.
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I looked at the filter idea, I dont remember why I gave up on it. I assume the stock in out is the regular pump and the fitting on top is your return from the rail. Where and how did you get the suction tube in there?
 
I like it. I wonder why I did not think of doing it that way? I was looking at water separator filters because they had the drain at the bottom so thats where I figured the suck would come from.
 
Rocket Science! Way cool project, practicle, uses the head instead of the wallet!
Thanks for the tour.....
 
Cool project, mate. What a stroke of luck Ford used the same 'pattern' for the intake for 20 years or so.
 
Just an update...

we loaded up the kids, fired up the laptop and took her out for its maiden voyage to the beach with the mega squirt at the controls.

I am very very pleased with it. i still have a small occasional stumble while accelerating (lean) and some areas of the VE map need some tuning (both lean and rich) but the EGO was able to make all the corrections to keep the air fuel ratio spot on.
 
i will once i get spark control. right now im just running fuel only so i dont think its going to be a whole bunch better than the old 1bbl.

im still trying to get it dialed in. some days she starts right up and other days it gives me a hard time. i still have some tach spikes at WOT also.
 
update on the tach spikes. some of the datalogs showed spikes of up to 26,000 rpm LOL. after some research and a post on the megasquirt forums all i needed was a 24 volt 5 watt zener diode installed inline with the tach wire input (silver band towards the coil) :)

im still getting some small random acceleration spikes so ive been tinkering with the acceleration wizards values.

cheers
 
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