3G Hemi fuel: EFI vs Carb

As probably the only person that has actually had both on a 3G Hemi in my car I can't deny that I really like my EFI setup, but at the same time the ease of the carb was hard to beat. I got the engine up and running within a day with a carb once the engine was in, just have to get fuel to the bowls and power to the MSD and it lit up just fine. This was also the easiest starting carb I've ever seen. I have a 71 Vette that never likes to start and keep running, can't figure out the choke or something. Even when it's hot out it doesn't like to run for a while until you've gotten down the road a bit. The Carter that was on the 318 ran like clockwork every time I turned the key and ran just as good on the Hemi. Started real easy and barely even needed to warm up. I could turn the key and drive the car within a minute without any problems, never seen that in a carb before. The one problem I had was I didn't have the tuning parts or dyno availability around here to tune the carb for max potential. I don't doubt that a carb will make even power with EFI when tuned right, gas is gas when it's in the cylinder and if you look around the net you'll find lots of professional racers saying that for max power it's marginal if noticeable at all on the difference.

The main benefit to EFI is the self adjusting nature. For instance, I live in Kansas. The weather here is best determined by flipping a coin instead of listening to a forecast. We've had winters in the single digits, summers in the 100+ range, and I've seen days that have had 30-50 degree swings over the course of 12 hours or less. A carb will run best for the exact conditions it is set up for. If the environment varies, you'll lose some power unless you retune it. However, unless you want your engine making max power all the time whenever you drive it, you probably won't care. If you're racing the car with a carb anyway, you're probably pretty likely to be tuning it at the track if you're that serious.

The one issue I had with my carb build was the nature of the 3G Hemi. It will sip fuel on cruise pretty gingerly, but when you romp on the gas it drinks it out of a bucket. I had a hard time trying to figure out if my carb even had the potential to cover that kind of range of fuel delivery. I was getting near the maximum range of jets and rods that were available for my carb. However, some other variety of carb may be able to handle this, I'm really not well versed on all the options out there.

Frankly speaking, if it weren't for the fact that I had a fuel injection system fall in my lap for a crazy deal, I'd probably still be running a carb. A carb swap ran me around $600 for the MSD and harness, $400 for the intake (XV and Mopar are just stupd on their pricing), and maybe $50 for a fuel pump (already had the carb). I didn't get a computer or factory harness with my engine. My fuel system alone when I went to EFI cost me that much (went with in tank pump because I drive the car fairly often and wanted a baffeld tank for that). $750 for a tank and a few hundred for all the line and fittings. Now add on an ECU and wiring and you're probably doubling that at least, so I really do think the carb swap is more affordable than people give it credit for.

One of the things I really like and hate about my EFI though is that I can do almost anything I want with it. It's an aftermarket system with tons of control (Megasquirt 2). I fought and fought trying to get it to run right when I first installed it. You get next to NO tune out of the box, so even finding a starting point to get the engine to run can be a challenge. Then you have to tune the whole map section by section and try to get the transitions right so that it runs smooth through the whole range. This is already built in to a carb for the most part, so you just have to change a jet and since you have fairly limited jet choices in comparison, you can get it dialed in a little easier, though maybe not as precisely. I spent tons of time just driving the car around, logging data, and messing with the map and ended up just flat out starting over before I finally got something I was happy with.

The main reason I even considered a Hemi swap to start with (aside from cool factor), is the potential in these engines. Sure, you can build an LA engine to make 450 hp, but how much do you have to spend to make that happen and how driveable is it? I considered three different options when I was planning my car, a smallblock stroker, a supercharged smallblock, and a "lightweight" bigblock. Was shooting for 450-500 hp in the long run and most of the builds came in around the same price. By the time I replaced the whole rotating assembly in a small block and put on good heads I was $5000 in. A supercharger kit was similarly priced on it's own plus any internal changes I wanted to make (seen some pretty nasty builds on stock parts though). A big block wasn't significantly cheaper, but way heavier unless I went with a lot of pricey aluminum pieces. The hemi swap added up around that same price, but in the end I actually came in under that, even with the engine and machine work. Not to mention stock 5.7 heads flow almost as good as fully done LA heads. Put on $2000 in ported heads and a cam and the 5.7 cranks 450 easy all day on stock internals and doesn't drive any different than it does untouched. Not to mention these engines appear to last a long time. My engine claimed to have 60k miles and was out of a police car that was probably driven pretty hard since it dropped a valve seat (think it likely cooked a head). Even with that punishment my bearings looked brand new and I reused them without any problems. The cylinders still had the cross hatch on them as well and no ridge that I could find. The thing also runs glass smooth once I got it dialed in, can barely tell the engine is running going down the highway.

Long story short there are plenty of reasons to go with the newer technology inside the engine, even if you don't use all the technology available on the outside. I did my whole swap with bolt on parts, the only piece I had to modify was to trim the input shaft on my trans (833). Didn't have to touch a panel or weld anything together to make it fit. Personally I don't like the look of single barrel throttle bodies on old cars, they just look silly to me because the cars aren't set up to run an intake tube straight out of the front of the engine, it looks out of place. I have a carb style throttle body on mine because of the intake I have and I think it's pretty cool. It keeps that old style look and even the old style sound of a set of secondaries opening up. Stand on the gas and you can hear the thing sucking through the hood scoop from inside the car.

To each his own though, I just like seeing these cars get back on the road, regardless of what's powering them I'll drool on them when I see them. I'm frequently about the only Mopar at any of the cars shows I go to. Lots of people don't even know what kind of car it is since the only badge it had was a Dodge logo (got some Hemi badges now too). I had one group of kids think it was a Nova and that "it looked just like one" but it had a Dodge badge on it so it couldn't be. Even when I tell people it's a Dart they just kind of look at me like, "what's a Dart?". It's even more fun when I pop the hood now. It looks like it has a carb with the throttle body, but it has fuel rails as well. They also try to figure out where the distributor went, lol.