- Oh, what's that?
You wanna turbo your car?
Classic.
You wanna make some turbo noises, make some horsepower,
you wanna be a boost creep,
and of course you wanna impress a lot of dudes.
Trust me, I get it.
But turboing your car can seem overwhelming.
There's so many parts.
There's so many things.
How do you know it's all gonna work together?
How do you keep it cool?
How do you tune it?
And maybe, most importantly,
how do you make sure your fuel system
is up to the task of handling all that new boost juice
your turbo's slamming into your engine?
That's what we're gonna be doing today.
We're gonna be upgrading our fuel injectors
and talking about the fuel system overall
to make sure that you know what you need to upgrade
if you're thinking about turboing your car.
Episode 5 of the six-part turbo spectacular, fueling.
Let's squirt some gas, baby!
(upbeat electric music)
(knocking on door)
- All right, Nolan hurry up, we're still rolling.
- [Nolan] I'm tidying up in here, Jerry.
One second.
- You know, this is the office bathroom, right?
- Thanks to manscaped.com
for sponsoring today's episode of Money Pit.
Now, before we get back to Jobe and his dreamy blue eyes...
I just had to jump in and talk about my balls
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It's a little graphic, I know, but stick with me.
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- That bald toner spray is refreshing.
I left the trimmer on the sink for you
in case you wanna check it out.
All right, see ya.
- When in Rome. (Jerry laughs)
- All right, so far on our little turbo saga,
we have installed and talked about the turbo manifold,
the downpipe, the turbo itself, the intercooler,
all the intercooler piping, and the blow off valve.
So that leaves us with one big area
that we haven't touched or talked about,
and that's the fuel system.
Now we know that adding a turbo to a car
is gonna cram a lot more air into the engine,
and that's great for making power.
The more air you can get in, the more fuel you can burn,
the more power you can make.
But the trick is making sure your fuel system
can keep up with the need to make sure it can deliver
the fuel you need to match the air you're getting.
There's really only a few parts to the fuel system equation.
We've got the fuel injectors, we've got the fuel pump,
we have the lines and the fuel rail,
and the fuel pressure regulator.
So we're gonna talk about all those things today
and I think we're gonna start with the fuel injectors.
Fuel injectors are a super critical part
of the fuel system equation.
The injectors are responsible
for squirting the appropriate amount of fuel
into each cylinder to make the correct air fuel ratio
that you're targeting at any given point.
The problem comes when the fuel injectors are too small
to squirt enough fuel to keep up with the air
that you're slamming into the engine.
So that's when you need to think about bigger injectors.
But they come in all sorts of sizes.
So the question is, how do you know what size to buy?
Really, all you need to do is hop online
and use one of several fuel injector calculators.
So I've got my fingers crossed real hard
for 225 wheel horsepower on the Miata, okay?
So this calculator uses crank horsepower, right?
So 225 of the wheels,
we can call that about 260 at the crank.
So that's what we put in here.
Our target crank horsepower of 260,
four injectors, cause we've got four cylinders,
one injector each.
Our induction type, turbocharged.
That's right.
Fuel type, gasoline.
And our max duty cycle of 80%.
So injectors work on what's called a duty cycle,
which is basically percentage of time on.
And basically you want your fuel injectors
to be operating at about 80% on time at maximum.
You go too high on that duty cycle
and you lose control of the fuel injectors
and they kinda just dump fuel.
They become on all the time, basically.
Now we just hit "Calculate".
And so, we see that we need a 427 CC per minute injector.
So now there's not gonna be
a 427 CC injector on the market most likely.
Now, the good news is that fuel injectors
are one of those places
where you can kind of oversize them a bit
with no negative effect.
So while we only need 427 CCs a minute out of our injectors,
I bought 650s because I wanted a little bit of headroom.
I don't wanna have to replace my fuel injectors
if we crank up the boost.
So I went ahead and oversized those puppies a little bit.
Now, we can go ahead and figure out
whether or not our fuel pump is up to the task at hand.
We just gotta use another calculator.
Okay, so it's gonna be very similar
to how we figured out what size injectors to run.
DeatschWerks also has a fuel pump calculator
on their website and it's super easy to use.
But you do need to know what size injectors
you're gonna be running before you figure out you fuel pump.
So we're just gonna plug in the numbers that it asked for
for the fuel pump calculation and see what we got going on.
So first it needs to know the number of injectors.
Again, four.
It needs to know the injector flow rate, 650 CCs.
Then it needs to know base fuel pressure.
And we will talk more
about base fuel pressure in a little bit.
But base fuel pressure of 43.5 PSI.
And then I asked for boost pressure.
I don't know exactly what we're gonna land on
but I put in 10 PSI just to start there.
So then the fuel system type,
whether it's a return type or returnless,
whether or not there's any fuel
that gets sent back to the tank
from the fuel pressure regulator
Miata has a return style system.
So plug that in.
So we hit the "Calculate" button and we see two numbers.
We've got a flow rating and a pressure rating.
In terms of flow, liters per hour,
a very common way for fuel pumps to be measured.
It requires 156 liters per hour.
And we're looking at 54 PSI of fuel pressure.
And that's a relationship with the boost
that we'll talk about a little bit more later.
So the great news is that the Miata's stock fuel pump
is 165 liters per hour, which means it's up to the task.
We don't have to upgrade the fuel pump in the Miata.
So check that off the list.
Fuel pump is good.
Okay, so the next thing that we need to talk about
in the fuel system equation is the fuel pressure regulator.
It's a very important part of this whole system
and its job is to maintain our base fuel pressure
basically all the time.
Now we mentioned base fuel pressure
when we were talking about the fuel pump,
but we gotta we gotta dive into that a little bit.
What is base fuel pressure?
What does it mean?
Most gasoline normally-injected engines
like the ones from the '90s, like this puppy right here
operate on a base fuel pressure of 3 bar or 43.5 PSI.
The job of the fuel pressure regulator
is to maintain that effective pressure all the time.
So if you're running 36 PSI of fuel pressure
and you have -7.5 PSI of pressure in the intake manifold,
you're effectively running 43.5 PSI fuel pressure.
Now inversely, when boost happens,
when you make positive pressure in the intake manifold,
you need to increase fuel pressure
to overcome the resistance
that's now in the intake manifold,
all that boost pressure.
So that's the job of the fuel pressure regulator,
to alter the actual fuel pressure
based on what the intake manifold
is seeing in terms of pressure.
So that's why we have a vacuum reference
on our fuel pressure regulator.
That's how the stock one on the Miata works,
which is awesome.
This thing will increase fuel pressure by one PSI
with every PSI of boost pressure.
So I don't even need to upgrade the fuel pressure regulator.
Check!
Didn't have to spend a buck.
Moving right along,
let's talk about the fuel lines and the fuel rail.
You need to upgrade those things?
Generally speaking, fuel lines aren't gonna need upgraded.
A lot of stock fuel lines are 3/8 like on the Miata.
And a 3/8 fuel line can support
over 500 horsepower, no problem.
And it's basically the same deal with your fuel rails.
Most of the time, your stock fuel rail
is gonna be fine for making whatever power you want.
But an aftermarket fuel rail can,
a, look awesome.
They definitely do flow more fuel
if you are in the stratospheric horsepower range,
and you need that.
They dissipate heat better, which is great for fuel.
So there are some cases where you're gonna need one,
but in terms of my power goes, 225 wheel horsepower,
this stock rail is gonna be just fine.
So we'll check that off the list with a big fat check.
So that basically covers our whole fuel system
from the pump to the lines, the rail, the regulator,
and the injectors themselves.
So for the Miata, for my goals,
all we got to do is install a set of injectors.
Should be pretty easy, right?
Yeah, I think so.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna take the fuel rail off first
and just pop the new injectors in,
make sure there's no fitment issues there
before I worry about soldering in the new pigtails.
This would be a good time to depressurize your fuel system
if you have pressure in it.
And you might lose a few drops,
so be ready with a rag or even a cup.
(metals clanging)
And that's...
Oh (bleep), spacer.
Man, I forgot about that.
Okay.
Here's those old injectors.
You did good guys, you did good.
That was easy.
Five minutes.
All right, so we've got the old injectors out.
It was super quick and easy.
Now we're gonna pop the new ones in.
Should also be quick and easy.
I'm gonna put a drop of assembly lube on the O rings
so they don't get hurt while I pop them in to the fuel rail.
But these should go right in place with the stock ones.
Should be super simple.
(upbeat music)
Okay, our nice new blue fuel injectors,
our 650 CC injectors are in place,
and it was pretty easy to get them there.
Now we need to replace all the stock connectors
for the stock injectors because this connector style
is different than our new injectors.
I'm actually excited about this
'cause all these connectors are broken.
So we just have to cut this sheathing off this harness,
make some cuts, do some soldering,
and we should be in business.
(upbeat jazzy music)
(airplane engine roaring)
All right, so our new pigtails are soldered on
and they are clipped into the injectors, that's great.
I need to do a little more work cleaning up this harness
and I got to tape the remaining exposed wires,
but that'll work for now.
So the fuel injector install is done,
or is it?
No, it's not done.
Physically, it is done,
but we got to connect the laptop to the Mega Squirt
and tell it all about our new injectors.
Now, the good news is, when you get a good set of injectors
it comes with some information.
So we have all the information we need
that we need to plug into a laptop
to tell the ECU all about these brand new fuel squirters.
So we're gonna take this info, hop on the laptop,
and see if we can figure this out.
All right, so I found the first part
of what I need to do in Mega Squirt
which is just updating it on the size of the injectors.
And like I said, these are 650 CC injectors.
That's what I bought.
But a fuel injector clinic flow tests
all the fuel injectors they send out,
and when they tested them,
they flowed 673 CCs a minute at 43.5 PSI.
So even though these are 650s,
I'm gonna put 673 in the Mega Squirt, just to be specific.
Okay, so it did actually end up being
a little bit more convoluted to put the injector data
in the Mega Squirt than I expected.
But luckily, I was able to find a spreadsheet
that some guy made online that I could plug my data into
and it would give me the values
that I needed for Mega Squirt.
So now that's all done and really the car should run.
The only issue is that I'm still waiting
on the oil feed line for the turbo.
So I can't start this thing.
But the great news is the injectors are totally installed.
I turned the key on to get fuel pressure,
checked for leaks, there are none.
So the only thing we have left to do today
is install a boost gauge.
So let's get to it.
All right, so to install the boost gauge,
it's pretty simple.
We're just gonna take a reference from the intake manifold
behind the throttle body for boost,
and I'm gonna connect the vacuum line to that.
And the vacuum line we'll come over here
to this little transducer that I've just zip tied up
to the brake lines here
'cause this is ultimately gonna be kind of temporary.
Then the wires from that go into the cabin.
(jazzy music)
Now I'm gonna drill a hole in this vent.
I'm putting the boost gauge up
next to the wide band gauge in the other vent.
And then I gotta wire some power
and ground up to the wiring that I just pushed through.
And then that's about it.
(drill whirring)
All right, with the glove box out,
I should have a little more access over here
to route these wires up into their place.
All right, so our wires are up here,
so that part's done.
Now, I just need to do a little splicing,
get 12 volts and get ground to this thing,
and we're in business, baby.
All right, so our boost gauge is technically installed
and everything's wired up, so hopefully she should work.
Ta da! It does work, looks great.
But as you may be able to tell, it doesn't fit super good.
It doesn't fit in the air vent like the Innovate Wideband.
So honestly, this is kind of a temporary solution for me.
I think I'm gonna go with a digital dash in the future
that I can monitor boost and a bunch of stuff on.
So for now, this poor fitment will work for me,
it'll let us keep an eye on boost.
And that's basically all I need for right now.
So no big deal.
We've got fuel injectors installed.
This puppy is ready to squirt a bunch of gas,
and now we can keep an eye on our boost levels.
So there's not a whole lot left to do.
Next week, we're gonna install boost control,
so we have control over how much boost we're making
and we're gonna get it tuned.
Next week, this puppy is gonna run and make some power,
hopefully 225 horses worth.
We'll see.
So that should do it for this week.
Check me back next week when we're gonna drive this thing.
Finally, thank you so much for watching.
Follow me on Instagram @Zachjobe
and follow Donut @Donutmedia.
See you next week.