6 replies to this topic

[Big_Valven]

Some of you may be aware that I have an old KE70 corolla, which is my plaything and general test bed for mechanical shenannigans. It's not road driven so it gives me plenty of opportunity to try different things. One thing I want to try over the coming months is fuel injection on the old four banger. I know lots of *cough* sheep put 4AGEs in KE70s, or webers / SUs on the 4K, or 5K / 7K transplants, but I'm not going for more power. The idea is purely a pursuit in frivolity!

The standard engine is the Toyota 4K-C carburetted 1.3 litre four cylinder. Iron block, alloy head, pushrod, single cam, 8 valves. Non crossflow! Canted over in the engine bay - gives you heaps of space for the air on the drivers side and no space for the manifolds on the other side, lol.

My plans, in time, are thus:
Electronic ignition
Fuel injection
Turbo (low PSI)
Rebuild, cam, head work, maybe some forged bits, maybe a very small stroker, exhaust manifold, etc
Intercool the turbo and wind up the powahh.



There was a version of the 4K with fuel injection (the 4K-E) but it's a peculiar design. Since the engine is not crossflow, they decided to use extremely long runners and put the plenum on top of the rocker cover to avoid heat soak from the exhaust below. Great for torque, but we're talking about a 1.3 litre undersquare engine here. This photo is looking from the rear of the engine forward.



What I would like to do however, is cut the runners off a spare carby inlet manifold, machine the face flat, and weld on some mandrel-bent runners, with the other ends flared and enclosed in a sheet metal plenum, with a throttlebody at the front, and bosses welded in for injectors near the ports. This is much more similar to the 7K-E's inlet manifold:





I am going to get a Megasquirt II to run it since it seems the best controller for DIY setups and we have others in SA playing with them too (looking at you ludichris.) Other supporting mods I can think off the top of my head:
Fuel cell in boot with EFI pump of some sort (maybe a VL commodore one)
New fuel lines through the interior
Remove and blank off cam driven fuel pump and distributor
Hall effect or similar DIS setup (Ie ford EDIS or something like that, ideas?)
Throttlebody: thinking Commodore 3.8 litre? Big, cheap and easy to get
Injectors: probably from a bigger 4cyl ie 4AGE or bigger to take care of turbo needs (standard 4K-E has 145cc injectors)
MAP sensor as per Megasquirt requirements.

As for ignition, I was thinking the logical idea would be coil-on-plug style sequential ignition using something like LS1 coils, but sequential ignition doesn't seem to be that popular in DIY yet, more people going for wasted spark setups (which I don't quite grasp yet?)

In terms of materials I was thinking of an aluminium intake and runners, but unsure if that'll be suitable. Heat soak is always a potential issue with the intake right above the exhaust but when I do a turbo manifold it would be designed to stay out of the way as much as possible, and probably wrapped as well. I figure if it's ally, it'll just heat soak quicker than mild steel, but I might be way off in my ideas.

If it works well, I will then build the engine to start getting the most out of the whole system, and if it ends up nice enough, I'll probably end up transplanting the lot into a street/show car down the track.

What I'd like are opinions, advice and ideas from anyone even slightly in the know for any aspect of a project like this! It'll be a long term project so I'm in no hurry and I'm hoping to learn a lot along the way.

Edited by Big_Valven, 17 June 2011 - 05:35 PM.

[Banned.ScrewYouTeam.inc]

direct lpg injection!

[atmo]

Those 4K's are such a hardy engine. My first car was a KE55 and at the time I didn't have much mechanical sympathy, but it took it like a champ and just kept going.

Still, considering the 4AGE is such a well trodden path as far as conversions go, I think you'd be a bit nuts not to do that instead.

[ubernoob]

There is no real problem running the longer runners on a turbo engine, it will give a bit more off boost driveability and as long as they can be made to flow well you could just weld a larger plenum on.

Eleccy ignition, I have used Crane products and recommend them highly, I have used both the XR700(I think) and the CDI unit(not good for radio reception) and they worked flawlessley. You would probably want to re spring(or weight) the advance mechanism on the distributor if you keep it(oops re read your post) . If you get rid of the distributor the Megajolt is possibly the way to go.
I'll add more later.

Car companies use wasted spark systems because it is cheap and they state it can help burn off excess fuel in the chamber post combustion, I doubt it would do anything and definately does nothing for performance.

Like this?
turbo

Edit I am one day going to make a piggyback style water meth injection system, it is half done but I have been very lazy lately. Would you want a schematic when it is all done? It should be pretty easy to build I just need to get a signal from the injectors but I'm thinking of going for an inductive pickup so I don't have to do any snipping.

Edited by ubernoob, 17 June 2011 - 07:47 PM.

[Big_Valven]

The thread you posted is my reference so far uber. He's done things in much the same way I'd like to.

So far my observations are thus:
I can get inlet and exhaust manifold CNC cut flanges locally, so I don't need to hack up a standard manifold. Many turbo builds are still using the factory cast manifold but it seems a basic mild steel manifold to high-mount the turbo where the battery went would work well and allow me to do some fabrication. If I arrange things right I should be able to make something approaching a matched-length four into one manifold, with a nice big dump pipe either out the front quarter panel or out under the passenger seat where it goes now.

An oil send can be tapped off under the oil filter where the oil pressure sender is, and there are a few places the return can go, but ultimately I'll weld a thread into the sump for it.

I'll want a fuel cell, lift pump, surge tank and a main pump, new fuel lines through the car incorporating a return line, and a rising rate fuel regulator.

From that I may run the standard ignition and a blowthrough with a carby enclosure to test it out, depends if the carby can keep up, particularly the needle and seat.

Then I'll look at welding up a plenum and intake manifold, bosses for some commodore injectors and a fuel rail, commodore or similar throttle body, etc etc then set up the megasquirt on fuelling.
Final step externally would be to pull the distributor apart, remove the mechanisms, and put a fixed hall effect sensor on there to trigger the megasquirt into wasted spark / sequential ignition with coil on plugs.

Yays! Now time to do some fabrication.

[scraverX]

You're a crazy Man Big_V. I like.

[Captn_Awesome]

What about returning the oil straight into the rocker cover?