[DeTomaso] final verduct on self-tuning fuel injection

[David Nunn]

Justin, 

I feel your pain! I suffered through a similar situation with an Accel DFI
system. I sent my Pantera to a shop in the Seattle area, who were supposed
to be EFI experts. They just tuned like I did; by trial and error and could
not get the car to run even close to the way it should. They couldn't even
get it to idle smoothly, which should be easy to accomplish with EFI. They
told me my engine was a poor candidate for EFI because of my "big" cam, low
vacuum, etc. At one point, I noticed the car sounding particularly rough and
told them to shut off the engine. I discovered one cylinder wasn't firing
due to a bad connection in the injector harness. What angered me so much
was, I discovered it, not the "expert". In disgust, I took the car back
home. In the following couple of years, I played with tuning the system
myself but it still ran like "crap". I came close to where you are and
nearly threw in the towel. A carburetor started to look pretty good to me
too! I called a local engine builder and he suggested I speak with Earl
Miller, Kinsler's EFI guru. Earl suggested I call Autotrend EFI, in Diamond
Springs, CA because they had experience specifically with Accel DFI and Ford
engines. To make a long story short, I sent my Pantera to Autotrend EFI and
within about fifteen minutes, they had my EFI running PERFECTLY. The first
thing they did was connect some diagnostic equipment to my engine. One of
these items was a breakout box, with LEDs that light with each cam and crank
sync signal. This immediately identified the problem: no cam sync signal
from my dual sync distributor. It seems the circuit board in the distributor
was "fried". Autotrend installed a new circuit board, then spent about ten
minutes tuning. Finally, my Pantera's engine ran like I always thought it
should with an EFI system. It was truly amazing. The point of this story is,
you may be closer than you think. If one minor item is wrong, it can cause
huge problems with an EFI system. 

It's not likely that the system you have is incapable of running properly on
your engine. That being said, if you feel that the manufacturer of your EFI
system has misrepresented their product and you've truly given-up, I'd hire
a Lawyer in their area, to write them a letter demanding a refund.