I am bringing my 1973 142 B20F back to daily driver, take it anywhere in the US, status.I'll be upgrading shocks, sway bars, springs, tires, exhaust. My question is what to do with the engine. This is the D-Jetronic fuel injected engine and everything is expensive to replace. As an example, the injectors are over $200 a piece. My question is if anyone has converted a fuel injected B20F back to carburated, and if so, what carbs? I'm familiar with Webers and SU's and have read something about Mikuni's. What are the basic problems going back to a carburated system? Thanks

If you decide to abandon the D-jet system, let me know. I'd gladly bank the parts away with the rest of my "junk".

Not junk! It's culch!
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Now I have to go look up another word definition....

Third definition:
also scultch or sculch (New England) Clean trash or rubbish, such as string, paper, and cloth: "We always had a culch box around" New Hampshire informant in DARE.
(DARE = Dictionary of American Regional English, a MOST interesting document)
From Lemur.com:
In the New England vernacular, a culch pile contains items which might (or might not) come in handy someday.
From Word Detective:
"Culch" is a word I learned growing up in Maine and have never heard anywhere else, even in the more urban areas of Maine. From the way it was used, I gather the definition is "stuff that has been thrown out but not thrown away, because it might be good for something someday." "Culch" is not trash or junk, because even though it might not be in perfect shape, it still could be used somehow. It is definitely not garbage. It could be pieces of lumber (but not piles of brush), old windows (but not broken ones), etc. I guess household items could be "culch," but what was pointed out to me was always outside. Where did this word come from? It sounds to me like it is short for "culture," related to gardening. Could that be? -- Gail Everett, via the internet.

Well, you've come to the right place. Word Detective Headquarters may be the "culch" center of the Midwest. Somehow, in just a few short years, we have managed to fill a cavernous two-car garage with enough old windows to furnish three large houses, dozens of wobbly chairs, four dysfunctional lawn mowers, a moribund motorcycle, six or seven bookcases painted in revolting shades of blue and pink, and enough indeterminate junk to fuel either nine yard sales or one really cool bonfire. Oh, and broken wicker chairs. Apparently, our motto is "You can never have too many broken wicker chairs."

Maine, like many parts of the U.S., sometimes seems to speak its own odd language. (A fine exploration of regional phrases in the U.S., by the way, is Allan Metcalf's fascinating book "How We Talk -- American Regional English Today" published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2000.) In the case of "culch," what we have is not only a very odd word, but a very old one as well. The original meaning of "culch," when it first appeared back around 1667 in England, was "the expanse of stone, broken shells and other material upon which an oyster bed is formed." The extended sense of "junk" appeared in England around 1736 and made it to Maine by 1890, but never went much further than eastern New England.

The probable root of "culch," the Old French "culche" meaning "bed" or "layer," is actually surprisingly logical, given its original "oyster bed" sense. That same "culch" (now the modern French "couche"), incidentally, also gave us the English word "couch."

--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

culch:
1. the stones, old shells, etc., forming an oyster bed and furnishing points of attachment for the spawn of oysters.
2. the spawn of oysters.
3. Also, sculch, scultch. Eastern New England. rubbish; refuse.
–verb (used with object)
4. to prepare (an oyster bed) with culch.

If there's any spawning going on down there, I want to know about it.

The US climate apparently isn't that conducive to Volvo spawning, although I think they successfully bred them in Canada for a while. but if you are lucky, maybe we had a cold enough winter for a clutch of eggs to hatch. Look around and see if you see any larval stage Volvo's like these on your property:


Back on the post - my advice is to not go to carbs. There's a reason every manyufacturer in the world has gone to fuel injection, and carbs have gone the way of the horse whip (i.e. still a few made for specialty applications). It's because fuel injection is better in nearly every conceivable way. Save, perhaps, for being able to poke at it with a screwdriver.

Granted, D-Jet is a bit crude. It's not really electronic, at least not in the modern digital sense. It's just a pile of analog resistors, tiny relays, whats-its inside a cakepan box. But it does work GREAT on a stock or close to stock motor. Far better than carbs do. It just takes a different skill set to trouble shoot it. D-Jet's main problem (IMO) through the years has been that it was often tinkered with by mechanics, who tried to treat it as a mechanical system. Well, other than the fuel pump and FPR, it's all just electrical. Sensors that work porperly or don't, wires that work properly or don't, and a gee-whiz pile of electronics that works properly or doesn't. When one of those things went awry, the common reaction was to start messing with things to compensate.

So jut do simple electrical style trouble shooting. Look up the ohm readings for each sensor. get a multimeter and test them at the sensor. Then test them again at the computer multiplug (to check the wiring). That will catch probably 90% of the maladies D-Jet gets (wiring and sensors). The computer boxes themselves rarely have issues. The fuel pumps are a bit spendy, but really, there's nothing special about it, with a tiny bit of work you could easily adapt any more modern, cheap common FI style pump.

And if that $350 (or more? who knows?) MAP sensor dies, think long and hard about keeping the rest of the FI hardware and upgrading the ECu from a cake-pan/Radioshack project to something modern and programmable, like Megasquirt. You could probably get MS up and running for about as much as a new MAP sensor would cost.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 +t

"There's a reason every manyufacturer in the world has gone to fuel injection, and carbs have gone the way of the horse whip (i.e. still a few made for specialty applications). It's because fuel injection is better in nearly every conceivable way. Save, perhaps, for being able to poke at it with a screwdriver."

Not quite on the mark. Fuel injection isn't better in every conceivable way, its because of emissions standards. Fuel injection systems,especially those that are self adjusting due to feedback, can be tweaked to control emissions on a mass production basis better than carbs can. For vehicles that do not have to meet emissions tests, and where simpler, smaller, cheaper is still better ( snowmobiles, jet skis, motorcycles, vintage cars, etc. ) carbs still dominate. And in a lot of race applications carbs and FI compete equally.
The point is that smaller, simpler, cheaper and more reliable are real values, and they are values charished by a lot of people who own vintage cars.

So the real deal is:
If you want to modify your engine for more power you have to get rid of the DJet.
If you like playing with electronics/computers go with a modern programable system to replace the D jet electronics - the brain, wiring and sensors.
If you don't like the complications of electronics, then bolt on a set of modern
carbs like the Mikuni HSRs and benefit from 40 years of technological carb improvements.
It takes only a small fraction of the time to install a set of carbs, start up and do basic tuning as compared to the time it takes to install FI, start and do basic tuning. It took me longer to type this than it takes me to install a set of mikunis on a B20.
Maybe I'm biased, but its not because I sell and install mikunis ( I can also sell and install FI ), its because I think simpler and more reliable are very important features for a vintage car.

Regards,
John
v-performance.com

Good points!
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

You're right - things are expensive to replace on Demonic-tronic. I don't like the system and have worked on VW, Mercedes and Volvo systems.
Price the fuel pump for d-jet against one for carbs.
Price the manifold pressure sensor - they fail all the time, and were over $350.00 last time I checked in Canada, which was about 15 years ago, if you can find one new.
Check out the relays and wiring, which fails.
As mentioned the auxiliary air valves don't work reliably.
The injectors are long-lived - I'll give them that.
Distributor trigger contacts are not available, AFAIK.
It is a very primal injection system, not really electronic at all. More like a multi-vibrator than transistor....
If you have to have injection, swap to K-jet.
I'd recommend SU's of course.....couple of nice HIF's.

I'd recommend the fuel economy of the B20 and D-jet (I got about 27 in my 1800E), it's pretty simple to put carbs on a B20E/F. Put some 7/8" softplugs in the injector ports and bolt on a normal intake manifold.

According to one SU carb wizard, the HS6 with a KN needle (for the B18B) is fine for a B20 motor. I tried running BBB needles in a pair of HIF6s on my B20E, but could never get it tuned correctly. Probably a carb issue - although several said that there was not an appropriate HIF needle for my setup.

A properly working D-jet system is hard to beat. Volvo said as much with an ad introducing the 1800E in 1970, which showed a pair of DCOE Webers with the caption "It goes faster without them"

I once converted a 72 145E to a single Weber (DGV) due to mysterious problems I couldn't figure out at the time (in hindsight, probably due to a failing fuel pressure regulator) and regretted it ever after. The only thing a single Weber is better than is Strombergs. While SUs can be quite satisfactory when set up correctly (impossible if they are worn out) they are not as good as fuel injection.

In my experience, (well over 100K miles in 3 different D-jet cars) problems with the injectors are rare--I don't think I ever had to replace one. The throttle switch can cause trouble, the auxiliary air valve rarely works correctly, and I've seen a MAP sensor go bad once or twice, but most problems are caused by the wiring harness and the crimped on terminals that connect to all of the various components. Either they corrode or the wires fray due to vibration, resulting in weak or intermittent connections. Still, I recommend keeping the injection if it is at all practical to do so.

If you can get it back together and retain the FI you will be ahead.
There are companies that refurb the injectors for around $15 each.
There are plenty of parts around if you know where to look and this board
is a great place to start both finding parts and figuring out how it works
or maybe why it doesn't.

Don't give up too quick!! Especially if you want it street-legal EVERYWHERE.
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Hello,

I found these on ebay the other day:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/EFI-Fuel-injector-Mercedes-Benz-MBZ-Volvo-BOSCH-NOS-6x_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33554QQihZ020QQitemZ300220045459QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW#ebayphotohosting



I don't know if these are the right ones though.


Goatman

Nice find on the blue tops! my 72 has those.
--
71-145-S