Retrotek Purchase

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Okay, so I pulled the trigger and ordered a RetroTek, Powerjection 1 kit. I ordered it from Speedway on Wednesday and it was here when I got home today.

I'm pulling my engine this Winter and dropping in a Ford Racing 342 stroker. But I might go ahead and drop the RetroTek on my current engine just to make sure I have all of the wiring sorted out.

I'll keep everyone posted in a new thread.

Tim
 
It looks like a nice product....but $2000 is a little steep for an intake manifold, fuel rails, injectors and an EMS....not as bad as AEM, but still... the reason I say this is because you can use one of those manifolds with injector bosses....which are what? $300...hell, I have a set of aftermarket fuel rails I paid $60 for, add in a set of injectors...$400ish....and of course my favorite EMS, Megasquirt...lets splurge and get a pre-assembled unit for $400...another $60 for a relay box...grand total $1220....still significantly cheaper than that system....but I want to cut it down further...so I'm going to assemble my own megasquirt system....cuts the price down to $970...but wait....I dont need a new intake manifold, I can just use a TBI unit from some late model and adapt it to my intake....that would drop the price to roughly $670.....not too bad for a system that can be hidden under an air filter and look pretty much stock

I'm not saying retrotek makes a bad product...quite the opposite...I'm just always looking for cheaper ways to do the same thing...I happen to like megasquirt simply because I have used it on several other cars and I love the fact that its open-source...you can write your own code, or use other people's...new features are always being added...its a full standalone for a fraction of the price..

That being said, now the downside....because Megasquirt is open source the only tech support comes from other users/builders(though there is a large community of them) the learning curve for the system is steep...you have to do a lot of reading, its not easy, but you learn a lot through the process, I'm not promoting megasquirt here...just pointing out the most cost effective method for the same results, huge pricetags always make me wince...I will say that Retrotek's system sure as hell beats AEM as far as price and what is included goes, a much better deal...I am also interested to see the results of this thread however
 
Actually, the powerjection 1 is a throttle body style fuel injection setup.
Your points about megasquirt, intakes and fuel rails, etc. are quite accurate, IF you have a 5.0 based engine. For those of us with FE's, Clevlands, etc. that do not have readilly, or cheaply available intakes, the projection 1 and the new projection 111 would seem to be a great option, and in most cases, probably our cheapest option.
David.
 
Actually, the powerjection 1 is a throttle body style fuel injection setup.
Your points about megasquirt, intakes and fuel rails, etc. are quite accurate, IF you have a 5.0 based engine. For those of us with FE's, Clevlands, etc. that do not have readilly, or cheaply available intakes, the projection 1 and the new projection 111 would seem to be a great option, and in most cases, probably our cheapest option.
David.

proection 111? haven'theard of it, got any specifics or a link or something?
 
well, for big blocks, you could use a TBI unit from a later camaro for instance(any TBI unit that will provide enough air(not sure what all TBI units would be...maybe there are TBI big block setups that GM used)...injectors I dont know about, I know TBI injectors are usually pretty big, maybe add a couple more for a big block) I was also browsing through the junkyard today(I do that fairly often) and noticed quite a few setups that didnt use fuel rails at all, they just used a fitting at the top of the injector that was simply clamped to an EFI fuel line, a setup like that could use any number of injectors without the need for fuel rails or special manifolds at all....

As for me, I'll be going with a MS to run my 4.6L simply because I cant stand stock EFI ECUs anymore, they look for way too many sensors, throw CELs all the time for emmisions stuff and I simply dont like MAF systems....they are good for small mods, but I would rather be able to tune my engine myself to whatever mods I make
 
proection 111? haven'theard of it, got any specifics or a link or something?

Go to Professional Products Online and click on their new catalog link. It is in the fuel injection section. It is very similar to the projection 1 except it has the actual ECM built right into the side of the throttle body, so no wiring harness except for, I believe, 3 or 4 wires. It does not have spark control like the projection 1, but it otherwise is the same, self tuning and all. Looks like a pretty neat setup.
David.
 
Go to Professional Products Online and click on their new catalog link. It is in the fuel injection section. It is very similar to the projection 1 except it has the actual ECM built right into the side of the throttle body, so no wiring harness except for, I believe, 3 or 4 wires. It does not have spark control like the projection 1, but it otherwise is the same, self tuning and all. Looks like a pretty neat setup.
David.

that's the Poerjection system, not pro-jection. projection is made by Holley. have seen the Powerjection 3 system though, it seems pretty cool but ha no provisions for controllig th timing like the Powerjection I or the Holley Pro-jection systems do.
 
My bad. I had a brain fart there for awhile. I will now spell out "powerjection" one thousand times, well, maybe once.
No, it does not have the timing functions like the powerjection 1, but for an FE or any other engine that does not have a thick film type distributor available it can't be used anyway.
David.
 
My bad. I had a brain fart there for awhile. I will now spell out "powerjection" one thousand times, well, maybe once.
No, it does not have the timing functions like the powerjection 1, but for an FE or any other engine that does not have a thick film type distributor available it can't be used anyway.
David.


actually Mass-Flo has a kit for the FE that uses a TFI dizzy, i believe it's either a Mallory or Accel piece, getting one seperately from Mallory or Accel may be a chore but i'm sure it could be done.
 
If you have a 390 FE and want EFI couldn't you use a truck intake manifold from the 80s ? They were still using the 360 FE motor in trucks and had EFI setups. I'm sure with some porting those intakes would work 1/2 way decent. I doubt it would work on the larger FE motors but I'm rather sure that the 360 and the 390 intake manifolds interchange.
 
If you have a 390 FE and want EFI couldn't you use a truck intake manifold from the 80s ? They were still using the 360 FE motor in trucks and had EFI setups. I'm sure with some porting those intakes would work 1/2 way decent. I doubt it would work on the larger FE motors but I'm rather sure that the 360 and the 390 intake manifolds interchange.



there was no EFI FE motor made, there may have been an FT big truck motor but i highly doubt even that, in fact i'd almost my bet my life on it......almost.

the 360/390 engines were actually phased out of the F-100 through F-350 in the mid to late 70's having been replaced by the 351m/400 and 460 engines. the commercial trucks may have used the FT engine up until the mid 80's but i don't think even those got EFI. i could be wrong though, i was actually surprised to find out that the late 80's GMC Kodiak box truck i drove at work for about 2 years had throttle body injection on the 366 engine in it.

edit: ford stopped production of the FE series engines around 1976, the FT series engines were around until about 1978. the FT series engines were replaced by the 385 series engines in the big commercial trucks and they was a 370c.i. version of it. so maybe that's the engine you were thinking of instead of the 360?

the light duty trucks only had big v8's during the mid 80's were the 351w and the 460
 
actually Mass-Flo has a kit for the FE that uses a TFI dizzy, i believe it's either a Mallory or Accel piece, getting one seperately from Mallory or Accel may be a chore but i'm sure it could be done.

Mass-Flo uses a Mallory unit. Mallory won't sell it to the public as they have an exclusive deal with Mass-flo. Mass-flo won't sell it to you separately because they want you to use their whole system. I guess if you owned a Mass-flo system you would have to show a proof of purchase or otherwise if you ever needed a replacement for the dizzy.
David.