[DeTomaso] my final word on retrotek powerjection

Justin Greisberg justingreisberg at hotmail.com
Tue May 24 19:41:25 EDT 2011


sorry to keep sending my my trials and tribulations, but I wish I had seen this before I took the EFI plunge.  I have spent more than a year (here and there) trying to perfect the cold start and cold idle troubles of my retrotek EFI system.
 
So, I discovered there are some forums discussing do it yourself EFI systems - FAST has one that includes their EZ EFI, which gives a lot of generic info, and there are a bunch of people discussing the retrotek system on v8buick.com, under high tech for old iron.  With all that info, I learned:
 
1. the retrotek techs are nice, and the current main guy Bryce tries to be helpful, although he did not solve my problems.  he is actually mostly very responsive to email and phone.  And his online forum is apparently coming very soon.
 
2.  my problem was a sticking idle air control plunger, which apparently is common, but for some reason no one ever mentioned it to me.  Did a lot of looking and thinking to figure it out.  not sure yet how long my fix will work.
 
3. the retrotek software and hardware are actually quite versatile, and I am delighted with all the progress I have made.  I consider myself over the hump of learning.  the car starts warm or cold with about one crank of the engine, and it mostly idles well with its own "electronic choke" equivalent.  The driveability so far is great, although still working out a bunch of kinks.
 
Conclusions on easy EFI systems (FAST EZ EFI, and retrotek): some people are lucky and they just pop it on, and it just tunes itself and everything is great.  Some of us have a lot more issues, and to make it work, you probably need to learn a lot of the technology.  The knowledge is out there, and once the knowldge is yours, wow -- there is a lot of fun things you can do. 
 
But the companies dont make it easy for you -- there just are too many variables for this to be totally do it yourself.  But for me, I love the challenge of creating solutions to problems - like creating my own cooling system in the previous post.  These EFI systems are complex enough to keep the intellectually interested person busy for a long time.  There is nothing rudimentary or simple about these systems.
 
In conclusions, I have gained a lot of EFI knowledge.  Feel free to send me any questions about the FAST EZ EFI or powerjections systems -
 
Justin  
 
  		 	   		  


More information about the DeTomaso mailing list