I've got all the parts together to do a megasquirt conversion to my sig car. Cost isn't much more than a quality carb/tuning kit/aftermarket adjustable distributor would have been. If I add up the price of everything I bought that I would not have if I stuck with my thermoquad, I am over about $600-800 over where I would have been. I scrounged a lot of parts myself for the efi conversion and didn't farm out any work. Now if I stuck with a carb, I would be buying a holley 850dp + jet kit + power valves + pump cams so I would have hit that same $ very quickly. Then add on the cost of buying an aftermarket distributor or messing with a stock distributor to curve the timing. So cost doesn't have to be a barrier to efi, however the megasquirt-2 unit I bought for $250 is not for everyone.

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Run into trouble with an efi and you're pretty much screwed! Run into trouble with a carb and you can swap just about anything on to get you home.

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How so? If your needle and seat starts leaking big time on you flooding out your motor, unless you're keeping every spare part for your carb in your trunk, you're in no better shape. Most guys are just going to tow their car home instead of tinkering with a carb on the side of the freeway.

no offense to anybody here, none of us are stupid smart but if one can't tune a carb, one will have to pay somebody to set up things like; computer, sensors, weld in bungs, MAP and wiring. Like mentioned nobody makes a plug-in-play for a 440 mopar, even a mild one. It takes more than tapping an intake for injectors and slapping a throttle body on top. I'd put a complete set-up ready to roll at 3k. If it's worth it then pull the trigger. ALL of us here have bought things we don't need (many times for me) Just make sure you get your money's worth.

The FAST EZ-EFI is as close as you're going to get for plug and play. No manifold mods, a few sensors and computer to plug in and mount plus a new fuel pump. The throttle body and injectors bolt right on where you removed the carb and the computer "learns" as you drive it and adjusts itself. As far as EFI goes, I don't think it gets much simpler. Probably get the whole works for less than $2K. Is it a package you'd want for big cammed race or street/strip engine? Probably not but for the OP's application, I think it would be a good match.

I don't know, but this intake does look killer. I wish it wasn't too much money for EFI. I would put a set on the RC.

I agree, that is a cool looking intake. But at $460 that jegs was selling it for is pretty steep!

Yes, but the price isn't far off from a tunnelram intake, which is its carb'd competitor.

The "E" in EFI stands for Expensive, didn't you guys know?
It's about time 'CFI' starts hitting the FI bubble market.

I am considering FI on my W150 because I use it in the sand 4X4ing and sometimes run the float bowls dry on my 440 on the banks.

What is the most cost effective option for me? or is there some carb that will prevent this problem?

I know that the carbs on the 427 Cobras had this problem on hard corners and they had a different float bowl set up.

The bolt-on, self-learning EFI setups that look like carbs are tailor-made for your setup. They will run upside down.

I agree that TBI isn't the "most ideal" setup for an engine, but it gets the job done. And for $1725 plus the fuel system, it is almost affordable, expecially when you consider a tank of gas costs $100 or more and a set of decent tires will hit $1000 quickly. Whjat would I consider more ideal? Direct injection.

It's really nice to say "tune your carb" but I bet 90% of the owner-tuned carbs on the road aren't tuned that well. As a matter of fact it's much easier to install a couple of sensors and have someone weld in a bung for the O2 sensor than it is to tune a carb. I mean, jets alone don't get the job done, you need to consider pump cams, squirters, air bleeds, power valve restrictors, mods to the metering blocks, etc. In reality for street driving one can't tune a carb without a wideband O2 sensor and a lot of time and most likely some help in the end. Or a few hours of chassis dyno time.

Technological advances drive the market in funny ways. Here's an example.....Back in the day, VCRs cost a fortune. When you stuck a tape in, you might want to adjust your tracking to get best picture. BUT THEN the manufacturers figured out auto tracking. So not only didn't you have to adjust tracking manually, but they could make the tape drives with much less precision because the autotracking would adjust for it. I didn't notice the difference in picture quality, but the price of a VCR came down from $650 to $49.95.
Something similar is happening with fuel metering. You can buy a precision instrument, and use a lot of expertise, time and tools to set it up properly. Or you can buy something that self-tunes and will most often get similar results to the precision carburetor tuned with expertise, tools and time. And if the air pressure, temperature or humidity change, the self-tuning gizmo will work better than the precision instrument carburetor.

R.

BTW, I am still running a carb on my truck and I have given up thinking it's tuned properly. It runs good enough, but I am convinced fuel injection would do it better.