No fuel injection?

[motorhead]

I was reading through the rule book on Lucas oil offroad website and on page 31 came across the rule, no fuel injection. I have looked at countless prolites, 2s and 4s and never realized none of them were fuel injected, I was too busy studying the suspension and chassis design. Has there been any discussion of allowing fuel injection with maybe less motor displacement similar to class 10? Thanks

 

[MeFirst]

I was reading through the rule book on Lucas oil offroad website and on page 31 came across the rule, no fuel injection. I have looked at countless prolites, 2s and 4s and never realized none of them were fuel injected, I was too busy studying the suspension and chassis design. Has there been any discussion of allowing fuel injection with maybe less motor displacement similar to class 10? Thanks

I wasn't aware LOORRS isn't allowing FI but there have been FI trucks in the past. I know WSORR was allowing FI last year only on trucks that had previously used FI but was going all carbs this year. So Johnny Greaves ran FI in his P4 last year but a carb in his P2 since he hadn't run in P2 before. Not sure what the TORC rule is this year.

 

[motorhead]

I wasn't aware LOORRS isn't allowing FI but there have been FI trucks in the past. I know WSORR was allowing FI last year only on trucks that had previously used FI but was going all carbs this year. So Johnny Greaves ran FI in his P4 last year but a carb in his P2 since he hadn't run in P2 before. Not sure what the TORC rule is this year.

Thanks, this gives me a little hope.

I'm primarily interested in prolite and know alot of the prolite racers are on race-dezert, I'm interested to hear if you guys strongly appose fuel injection.

First off, I apologize if I sound out of line, but it seems the possible reason for not allowing fuel injection is intimidation (my humble opinion). Some of the racers who have been around a little longer don't want to change, which I can understand. I feel the next generation motor builders have discovered the tuning and data aquiring capabilities computers and FI bring to the table and possibly feel held back. I would hope, anything to progress the sport would be highly encouraged, specially when it could help make these money pit race motors last longer. If I have over step my bounds, I apologize and I will sit down and shut up.

 

[jg009]

What's the reason for not allowing fuel injection? That's really strange.

 

[birdman]

I think its so costs don't get out of control, they don't want the guy that cant afford FI to be left in the dust. you could spend crazy amounts of money on those things if they don't stop you at some point.

 

[Pro-Lite Brian]

Thanks, this gives me a little hope.

I'm primarily interested in prolite and know alot of the prolite racers are on race-dezert, I'm interested to hear if you guys strongly appose fuel injection.

First off, I appolgize if I sound out of line, but it seems the possible reason for not allowing fuel injection is intimidation (my humble opinion). Some of the racers who have been around a little longer don't want to change, which I can understand. I feel the next generation motor builders have discovered the tuning and data aquiring capabilities computers and FI bring to the table and possibly feel held back. I would hope, anything to progress the sport would be highly encouraged, specially when it could help make these money pit race motors last longer. If I have over step my bounds, I appologize and I will sit down and shut up.

Wow, you are very diplomatic! There are some of us Pro-Lite owners that would love to CHANGE over to Electronic Fuel Injection. In fact, I was involved in tuning both of the 2 teams that legally used fuel injection. The Rick Huseman, and Jimmy Crowder were required to run at a 100cc. dis-advantage in order to run the EFI. That worked out to pretty similar horsepower #'s to the 2700cc. carb'd stuff we ran/ run.

The biggest stumbling block was the cost to convert existing carb'd engines to EFI. New customers would have to buy parts either way so it didn't matter if it was an EFI pump or a carb style pump, or ECU versus MSD stand alone ignition... Now that dataloging is finally allowed, there shouldn't be so much resistance to the "electronics". Quite possibly the biggest benefit of running the EFI stuff was the datalogging capabilities that helped us figure out and solve some durability issues in the oiling system...

 

[motorhead]

I think its so costs don't get out of control, they don't want the guy that cant afford FI to be left in the dust. you could spend crazy amounts of money on those things if they don't stop you at some point.

I didn't consider that aspect of it to be an issue. The actual FI hardware cost isn't uber rediculous compared to a 20-30K prolite motor, although I've heard numbers like $200-$300 an hr to have a motor professionally dyno tuned, which is uber rediculous.

Alright, here is a ignorant question, why do you have to dyno tune? What does a dyno record or monitor differently than simply driving the car hooked up to a data looger or laptop with tuning software? Both are under loaded conditions, except I could see the dyno being more convenient. I would assume you could tune a FI motor off a dyno the same as a carburated motor assuming the tuner knew what he was doing.

If the overall consensus and concern is that FI equates to more $ than I'm all for sticking with carbs.

Pro-lite Brian - I agree, the switching over of carb race cars would be the biggest issue, although I think a possible solution would be for whatever racing orginization wanting to painlessly allow both is to state that in "X" number of years FI will be legal. Allowing teams planning to switch to use up whatever spare motors or parts soley used on carb motors. I also agree the data logging is probably the most enticing benefit, and if allowed would make a decent compromise.

 

[sickrick]

They are most concerned about traction control. It is just to hard to police.

 

[jg009]

I don’t know, banning fuel injection seems like a waste of time. Look at motocross and supercross. Just because the 4 stroke bikes got more technologically advanced and started beating the 2 strokes didn’t mean they got banned. Teams built up their 2 strokes for a while, then switched over to 4 strokes. In the “Lite” class (ex-125cc), 2 strokes were given a displacement advantage after a while. I think that FI should be legal if a team chooses to use it and we can just see where it goes from there.

That’s just my $.02

 

[speedfun]

There is a traction control that uses GPS on the market and the unit it the size of a pager and plugs into the MSD it can be kept in a drivers pocket and never found during teck I think they should allow fuel injection it would be much safer when a truck roles over no spillage and fire!! And FI will not give any more totals HP it just makes getting to 9000rpm better.
My two cense for what its worth