Looking for some opinions from some of the serious banshee guys out there. Anybody have any experience with some of the EFI systems or somehting like the Holtzman fuel injection system? I am interested in this for an alcohol application. Without going into a ton of detail, I think there is power to be had in an alcohol set up like this vs. a carb set up. Anybody have any comments or ideas??

 

EFI? Do you mean Fuel Injection???
Where, how much? Where do I find info on that?

 

I have ran EFI for about 9 years now, The system RPM had on their site was ours (GP Engineering). They ran the ad. with out us being ready to support it. An error on our part, not theirs. It is also similar to the system we used on my turbo banshee at pikes peak. Electronic fuel injection has some advantages over carbs such as more accurate fuel delivery, altitude compensation, temperature adjusting, and better throttle response. We used EFI on our micro sprints to overcome the fuel delivery difficulties with carbs on alcohol. The EFI systems main drawback is the need for a battery and extra wiring. However I have tested it with out a battery witch greatly simplifies the wiring. One of the problems with EFI is it is too difficult for the average consumer to install and maintain. This problem might be solved by having trained technicians install them at your favorite engine builder/dealer just as it is done with cars today. I am currently working with the Holtzman HFI on my quad. The Holtzman Fuel Injection is a mechanical pump that uses cylinder pressure to drive the pump. The theory is: the more power (read:cylinder pressure) the motor makes the more fuel it will deliver. At an idle there is very little power being made so very little fuel is delivered, at full throttle the power is much higher so is the fuel delivery. The system is self compensating to a point. On EFI the tuner tells the computer how much fuel to deliver at every point in the power band. If you change anything, such as a pipe, then the tuner must remap the fuel delivery. On the HFI the tuner simply sets the pump to deliver fuel in the range the motor needs. If you change the pipe, the pump will respond to the change in power the pipe made. So far it seems easy to tune but we have had reliability problems that I am sure will be worked out. As far as the conventional fuel injection, it does offer the throttle response and power gains as the other types but it does not compensate so it needs constant tuning.


I agree for the average person carbs are probably the best but, who wants to be average?!

 

Charlie, OhtonRacing,
Was you at Pikes Peak with a quad or just to watch?
The Extreme Quads that John Stallworth and I took to Pikes Peak used the HiPer Technology kit, the same one that Chis runs. The rep you mentioned was Tom Darnell from HiPer a close friend of mine. The biggest problem we had was lack of preparation! We went up there total untested. The turbo over boosted on mine and John's blew the seal between the case halves on race day just above glen cove.
Oh ya the crash I had was in practice at glen cove. I was at full bore through the radar trap (they clocked me at 92 mph) when I went to slow down for the turn it was to late! There was a racing semi crashed at that turn and also a rally car that had crashed into the semi (they didn't take the time to remove them) anyway I slid into the rally car and was catapulted over the car and the semi! The radar guy said I must have been going about 70! Somehow I escaped with out a scratch and the quad damage was minimal (luck!).
The turbo bikes showed great potential, In practice I hit 98 mph at the picnic grounds on a slippery road. John's bike hit 92 but was quicker out of the turns. The times listed in the results only show my split times because I was first across the line. John had a split time of 4:39 16 sec faster than Ragland and 19 sec off Millen's time. My E.T. of 13:03 and a split time of 7:13 gives me a time of 5:49 for the top section, only 1 sec off Millen's time in '99 and 33 sec faster than Ragland's. If you combine Johns lower time with my upper time just for a comparison you would get an overall time of 10:27! And neither bike was running its best. This is why we thought it might be possible to break the 10 min barrier.
The problems Chris and others have was similar to what we experienced at Pikes Peak for one the ECU baro is limited to 17 psi of boost so any thing over that is risky. The other may be voltage problems under high boost. I will send you an email with more info.

There is one thing I am sure of : [purple]BOOST[/purple] does equal [purple]ROOST![/purple]

Kevin Gigot
GP Engineering
gp@gcnet.com

 

gpracer,

What types of reliabilty problems have you had witht he HFI? Have you found the HFI a good solution to solve some of the problems with running alcohol, especially on the bottom end? What type of power gains have you seen over a crab setup?

 

409longrod,
The HFI unit so far shows good results.
The problem is a minor one with the inlet valve. We are working with Holtzman to fix the problem. Dyno test show a good gain on power on this motor (430 polaris) Smaller motors (<300cc/cyl.)is what Holtzman said he has tested it on and have had very little trouble.It is simpler than our EFI but may have some limits - volume for alcohol - maybe
that could be over come by bigger pumps?