Hi Everyone,

I am thinking about switching over to carbs. My stock FI is proving to be a PITA to fix and is costly. Can anybody recommend a good carb kit for a 74 914 w/ stock motor? All I know is that I heard webber was not good and I also heard something about having to add a cam if changing over to carbs. Can anyone help?

Personally I wouldn't give up on FI just yet
Ask around on the club a little more and see if you can't get the kinks worked out
Once it is working, FI is better than carbs (especially with the stock cam)
Which engine id it 1.8L or 2.0?

I have the 1.8L engine. I would love the keep the stock FI but parts are getting scarce and darn expensive.

Parts are expensive, but if you have some electronics know-how, you can always upgrade to Megasquirt or something similar in the future
As for the FI, what are the symptoms that you are experiencing?
Without even knowing those, I would recommend cheking all the vacuum lines as a vacuum leak on the L-Jet can really screw things up

I'm not very mechanical or electrical at all. I just told them I want the car running right. They suggested a carb kit probably because it is easier to for them to troubleshoot than the current FI system. They also said If I am planning on keeping the car for a long time, then carb might be the way to go since FI parts for the 1.8 are getting scarce. They said one of the circuit board things are wigging out and Pelican can Refurbish it but they need the shop to send them the board. Thats all I know.

call me old fashioned but I was going to go with duel webber 44's on mine...

dual webers or solex will work just fine. the 44's mentioned above will be waaaay too big for your engine.

dual 40 IDF webers with a small venturi setup should yield good results, even with the stock cam ...
Andy

I regret putting carbs on my '74 1.8. It's cool looking and sounding, but it's not an automatic fix and presents other issues.
Knowing what I know now, I would have put the money into an upgraded FI system.

It may cost $2k to put on webers properly, but it will simplify the car. Is the shop a good VW place? If you could go to them for periodic rebalancing and such after they put it in, and they knew what they were doing, it should be reliable. In fact- if you drop the $ for a real shop to do it, i would insist on a two year maintenance agreement- and you get to watch so you learn how to do it yourself. Go no bigger than "40 IDF" Webers, with a 28mm venturi in 'em (thats how a lot are set up anyway).

I just got done (with the help of Clay) putting the FI back ON my car. the Carb setup was nasty and very prone to weather disruption.

Since the FI went back on, Das Weibchen runs like a dream...

Don't give up on FI.

Doug

44s are way to big for your 1.8 unless you spend a ton of money to turn them into 40s. fix the L-jet on your car. good used parts should be available for a reasonable cost. try to pin the shop down on which one of the *things* they think is defective. if they can't be more specific find someone else to service your car. the money you save on service by doing the repairs yourself is going to pay for the parts you need.

a well set up set of carbs should NOT need regular adj of the linkage, the idle/air mixture screws nor the air by-pass.

k

With carbs, go with dual 40mm webers or dells.
Look on ebay for a guy in Italy that sells sets of dells, and he is great to do business with, and he knows his stuff.

Aircooled.net also is very helpful and trades jets and venturis till you get it right.

If you go with carbs, make sure there is a PCV solution as part of the kit, or install one yourself. If you dont, you have oil spraying all over the top of the motor.

All that being said, there are only five or six parts that go bad on Ljet.
Think about fixing it yourself, you will get expert advice here, you will understand you whole car when you are done, and you will see that its not to expensive to keep running perfectly.

Rich

Maybe I'm not the right person to say this being a recent carb convert myself but... why don't you host a flesh roast and invite people who know L-Jet to bring a "failure prone" item? You could, with the help of a few people, identify any faulty components, get your L-Jet running right, hang out with a few people, and learn about the L-Jet in the process?

CARBS ARE NOT EASY

I have been running carbs for 5 or 6 years.
There is always something to fuss with.
Yes I believe I have them pretty well nailed down now but not without ALLOT of money and time. Wide band A/F meter helped me get the jetting down to a knats ass of perfect.

So what am I going to do? build another motor that will require completely different set up. carbs jets etc.
I still get requests from my C-driver to go TWM Haltech EFI. I told if he buys it and tunes it I would allow him to put it on my car.

So I guess I'll be doing 44IDF's on my new WAY BIGGER motor.

please share the operational problems your engine is exhibiting with us.

k

I found it
http://manuals.type4.org/ljet

Rich

Call George Hussey at AA he helped through my FI problem on the phone, also take the other members advice and expertise on keeping the FI, much cheaper then putting on carbs.

Look. I've had a lot of luck with carb conversions. I took a set of Solex's 40 singles off my 75 1.8 daily driver when we had to cut it up. I like the way the L-Jet worked with the carbs much better than the D-Jet. If you decide to do the conversion I probably have all the parts.

that's a nice link rich. not to hj, i've thought a section where a list of links in originality or elsewhere would be so handy. plug L-jet into the search, use the any date feature, and there's quite a bit of reading.

k

I had a new '73 2.0 that after a few years left me standing on several occasions. I had enough and switched over to Webers. As others' have said, "There is always something to fuss with."

When the original EFI was working, it was great. Back then, there was not the wealth of information that there is today, so few knew how to effectively troublshoot it. I would tend toward seeking advise on how to troubleshoot and repair what you have. Although being that you're in LA, if you switched to carbs at least you wouldn't have to deal much with cold weather performance issues.

Andys

Thank You everyone for all your help. This is by far the best forum I have ever been a member of.

I have decided to work out the kinks in the FI system. The Circuit Board that is to the left of the engine was faulty in some way and the Shop is sending it out to Pelican who will then fix it and send it back. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Thanks again for all the support. I'm really glad to have the porsche and be a part of this community.

C'mon all you carb haters...

While there is no doubt that FI is a superior system (and I've spent long hours arguing its cause with Richard Parr ), carbs can't be all that bad...

ESPECIALLY for modified engines. After all, 356s, 911s, and 914-6 people love their cars, and I rarely here them say, hey, this car is great -- but I just wish it didn't have carburetors.

Then there is the sound, throttle response, looks, cost, complexity, long-term serviceability (are you maintaining a laptop to maintain a car?) etc.

I guess what I am asking is: Is a lot of the dearth about carb driveability related to them not being set up by someone with the "magic" touch?

As someone still mulling 2056 vs. 2270 vs. 2.5-liter six -- and someone not interested in any aftermarket EFI systems -- this is a VERY interesting subject to me.

pete

I would say....and I am not a carb hater, if you plan to keep the motor stock, stick with the stock FI, its cheaper, and it really is tuned for the motor.

If your going to modify the motor, go with Carbs.
I think the amount of effort, lack of support, and cost of the aftermarket FI systems available for the backyard tuner just keeps me away from the EFI game...its to much time, more than I want to learn, and I want to drive the damn thing.

Now, once a bolt on, cheap system is out there...Im in..till then, carbs can still be had for a good deal, they are simple to setup correctly, and you can get pretty cool camshafts to play with..

Rich

Exactly my point.

2056 + SSIs + carbs + nice cam + heads = what, 125-ish hp?

2270 + SSIs + carbs + nice cam + heads = what, 150-ish hp?

Simple and, set up right, probably lovely to drive. What's not great about this? And you still have heat.

Frankly, I'd go Subie before messing with EFI on a total budget of $10k or so, but then that is just me. Bump the budget to $15-25k and Motec or Jake's EFI setup is a no-brainer, so long as I am not the one mapping it out and as long as future tuning/repairs will be easy from common hardware platforms.

I've been rolling my old "question-liter" with stock FI for 15 years now and it has never let me down. BUT the desire for more power will probably dictate its demise.

Right now, carbs are in the lead for me... thousands of 356s, 912s, 911s, and 914s and their owners can't be all that wrong, can they?

pete