Hey John, I went to solid vent tubing. The foil hoses kept ripping.
Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
- Thread starter 1967 'cuda
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
LOL! I know what you mean. When we fired the Roadrunner up those foil ducts went totally spastic on us. I didn't expect them to jerk around so violently. It was like watching a Sasquatch have an epileptic seizure. One side blew off right away and the other tore just past the end of the exhaust pipe. I ended up using zip ties to hold the pair together and then placed a transmission blanket over them to keep them from jumping around. I'd seen that you modified your setup with solid tubing. - NOW I know why.
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Two weeks after I had the rest of my top teeth pulled and I'm still having a lot of pain. I finally realized why. Apparently there are several sharp splintered tooth pieces inside my gum. I managed to work one out with my tongue. I'd been trying to dig out a second one but it was pretty stubborn. At first all I did was loosen it and cause a lot of bleeding, but after 10 minutes or so I finally got it out. It was most likely irritating the surrounding tissue so I'm hoping more of the swelling will go down. Right now I don't feel any other pieces but I suppose more will surface later.
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Yesterday was a no-go with FAST tech support. I left a call back number and waited. We've actually had fairly good luck getting in contact with them. Maybe it was a busy day.
I did manage to put some time into project pinball. My first attempt at printing an overlay for the back glass didn't turn out so well. The vinyl I tried printing on wouldn't absorb the ink. It beaded up and distorted the image.
Luckily I had gotten material from more than one vendor. After crappy results with that first sheet, the rest printed fine. I ran out of vinyl before I was done and ordered more. Although this vinyl is self-adhesive, I used scotch tape to hold the pieces to the glass for now. If I get them to butt perfectly I'm hoping there won't be any seams showing. - Otherwise I'll look at having a vinyl shop produce the image in one piece.
I still have to modify the backlighting so the two cars, Thunder Valley logo, & christmas tree are lit. Right now you can see bulbs shining through in areas I want kept dark. I imagine I'll have to paint a large portion of the backside of the glass to control illumination. It'll also mean deleting some lights and adding others. I don't think it'll be a success if I don't get the lighting right.
In order to use these 'modded' pop bumper caps with the LEDs I'll have to solder some wiring. I've been finding out that replacing all the bulbs with LEDs is a mistake. In some areas regular bulbs disperse light better. I guess I'll be using a combination of the two.
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I did manage to put some time into project pinball. My first attempt at printing an overlay for the back glass didn't turn out so well. The vinyl I tried printing on wouldn't absorb the ink. It beaded up and distorted the image.
Luckily I had gotten material from more than one vendor. After crappy results with that first sheet, the rest printed fine. I ran out of vinyl before I was done and ordered more. Although this vinyl is self-adhesive, I used scotch tape to hold the pieces to the glass for now. If I get them to butt perfectly I'm hoping there won't be any seams showing. - Otherwise I'll look at having a vinyl shop produce the image in one piece.
I still have to modify the backlighting so the two cars, Thunder Valley logo, & christmas tree are lit. Right now you can see bulbs shining through in areas I want kept dark. I imagine I'll have to paint a large portion of the backside of the glass to control illumination. It'll also mean deleting some lights and adding others. I don't think it'll be a success if I don't get the lighting right.
In order to use these 'modded' pop bumper caps with the LEDs I'll have to solder some wiring. I've been finding out that replacing all the bulbs with LEDs is a mistake. In some areas regular bulbs disperse light better. I guess I'll be using a combination of the two.
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
My next contact with FAST tech support wasn't as productive as I'd hoped. Prior to calling them I wasn't able to get the car to start but I thought the information we'd gathered the previous time would help.
I knew that our timing light was showing 43' BTDC when the computer said it was set to be 9' BTDC. My question was where to go from there.
I didn't get the same technician that we talked to before. This one gave quick dismissive answers that made it seem he was eager to get off the phone. I explained to him the difficulty getting the car to run and the difference in timing readings between the timing light & the computer. I asked for the correct procedure to sync the two. His initial answer was to rotate the distributor until the two matched. His response confused me because it seemed that it would totally screw with the rotor phasing we'd done. I could understand minor adjustments but not a 34' adjustment. So I asked him if it would cause problems and what the maximum adjustment could be before it messed up phasing. His answer then was that we shouldn't go beyond 5' to 10'. I re-stated the amount we were off and asked again what to do. He then said we needed to start over and phase the distributor again because we must not have it correct. He said he had no further advice so I got off the phone.
I know we'd re-checked the phasing several times. Unless we misinterpreted the instructions I'd most likely be setting it up in the same position we already did before. I'll hit the manual and see if there is another way to decipher it that would bring us further into sync. We had FAST talk us through the procedure once before and they had us set it up exactly the same way we had done by ourselves. That is the original reason we made certain our harmonic balancer was marked correctly and verified TDC.
If I can't figure out some new interpretation of the instructions, I'll try to set it up with a target that has 34' less advance and see if it works.
I knew that our timing light was showing 43' BTDC when the computer said it was set to be 9' BTDC. My question was where to go from there.
I didn't get the same technician that we talked to before. This one gave quick dismissive answers that made it seem he was eager to get off the phone. I explained to him the difficulty getting the car to run and the difference in timing readings between the timing light & the computer. I asked for the correct procedure to sync the two. His initial answer was to rotate the distributor until the two matched. His response confused me because it seemed that it would totally screw with the rotor phasing we'd done. I could understand minor adjustments but not a 34' adjustment. So I asked him if it would cause problems and what the maximum adjustment could be before it messed up phasing. His answer then was that we shouldn't go beyond 5' to 10'. I re-stated the amount we were off and asked again what to do. He then said we needed to start over and phase the distributor again because we must not have it correct. He said he had no further advice so I got off the phone.
I know we'd re-checked the phasing several times. Unless we misinterpreted the instructions I'd most likely be setting it up in the same position we already did before. I'll hit the manual and see if there is another way to decipher it that would bring us further into sync. We had FAST talk us through the procedure once before and they had us set it up exactly the same way we had done by ourselves. That is the original reason we made certain our harmonic balancer was marked correctly and verified TDC.
If I can't figure out some new interpretation of the instructions, I'll try to set it up with a target that has 34' less advance and see if it works.
Pin ball machine looks great, also love the 70's carpet in the room.
As for the FI set up I would have never bought it, a carb on my old truck starts easier in the winter than the FI on my Jeep.
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Thanks Sireland. I'm wondering if I wouldn't have been better off printing the back glass differently. Maybe I should have just painted the background black and then attached the various images on top. Then I wouldn't have concerns about having any seams show. I think that's the route I'll take when applying the images on the table top because it'll be a real pain to try to cut & fit around all the weird shapes.
The masochistic side of me still says the efi will be great once dialed in. Once (if) we get it working properly, my next concern is how reliable it will be. I doubt we'll ever become expert with this system but hopefully we'll be less stupid about it. I really value good communication and get discouraged when dealing with poorly written instructions or technicians that don't reveal complete answers to questions.
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EFI works on a daily driver some what. Compromise on everything.
I hate the drive by wire system on my challenger.
Nothing like a throttle cable hooked to a carb sit up right.
Sounds like FAST is a money grubbing company.
I hate the drive by wire system on my challenger.
Nothing like a throttle cable hooked to a carb sit up right.
Sounds like FAST is a money grubbing company.
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Before my son decided to choose them he tried to read up as much as he could. The initial reviews were great and no one was talking about problems. The company's founder sounded legitimately knowledgeable about efi technology and his design was supposed to be a revolutionary step forward. My biggest gripe so far is the lack of quality in their instructions. If they would set up a better (more comprehensive) manual that had an explicit troubleshooting guide I think a lot more people would be happy. By now the word has gotten out that folks are experiencing problems. It's got to be affecting their sales. The thing that keeps me hopeful are the guys that finally got their systems dialed in and rave about them. Right now I'm not willing to say the FAST efi is junk but I'm not shy about giving my opinion on their documentation.
Well, they sure aren't selling these setups cheap!
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Christmas is getting close so a lot of my attention has had to go to preparation for the coming holidays. Teresa already knows about her pinball machine. It's hard to keep anything that large a secret and I guess she did go with me to pick it up.
Spencer's sometimes difficult to shop for. I know he wants car parts but if I get him something that's truly a surprise, he may not like it. The house he bought has a large bookshelf/mantle fireplace so I took a gamble on getting him stuff to decorate it. Along time ago he had discussed hanging a shield & swords on the wall with my other son. I hoped maybe he'd like something with sort of a medieval theme.
The reproduction helmets came from India. I believe one is Greek & the other Roman. I had to modify the gold one to make the brass dragons match the helmet's contour. When I priced stands for them I was surprised that I couldn't find any cheaper than $20 each and they were just wooden dowels in a square wood base. After checking eBay I came up with a pair of black felt covered Styrofoam mannequin heads. I used an old broom handle and some scrap oak to raise them a little higher and provide a more stable base. - Some black Rustoleum and WAALAA! - Ready for Christmas.
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Spencer's sometimes difficult to shop for. I know he wants car parts but if I get him something that's truly a surprise, he may not like it. The house he bought has a large bookshelf/mantle fireplace so I took a gamble on getting him stuff to decorate it. Along time ago he had discussed hanging a shield & swords on the wall with my other son. I hoped maybe he'd like something with sort of a medieval theme.
The reproduction helmets came from India. I believe one is Greek & the other Roman. I had to modify the gold one to make the brass dragons match the helmet's contour. When I priced stands for them I was surprised that I couldn't find any cheaper than $20 each and they were just wooden dowels in a square wood base. After checking eBay I came up with a pair of black felt covered Styrofoam mannequin heads. I used an old broom handle and some scrap oak to raise them a little higher and provide a more stable base. - Some black Rustoleum and WAALAA! - Ready for Christmas.
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Damn John,those helmets are exquisite... Nice progress,on the pinball machine..
Average Joe
Well-Known Member
There is nothing wrong with the injection system.It works great. I went through this two months ago.Fast technical support isn't going to be able to get you where you need to be with the injection system.They are only going to be able to give enough information to help get it running.I believe they have a time limit on there support and a lot of there techs know the system but do not know how to tune.I have that same system on my Supercharged Hemi and it works great.
I built my system like you and your son.I am only trying to share this advice to help.
If your struggling with how to change the fuel mapping or the timing mapping you will need help from someone who tunes injection or someone who will answer your questions.I tried FAST technical support when I got my car running and went through the exact frustration your going through now.If you know someone who tunes that would be your best bet.If not you could call rich at fastman EFI. For 250 dollars he will answer all your questions and work with you on a tune by sending data logs through email.John you and your son will enjoy the injection.I do understand what your going through I thought I would be able to tune mine and unfortunately my system with the blow through was just to complicated for me.I would sink the timing on the distributor to the computer that will help it start and run.I had the same problem and that was the first thing we did during the the first dyno session.
The fact that you and your son are doing this together even if its not going the way you thought
is AWESOME!!Stay strong you'll get it going.
I thought I would never get my car running right either but I drove it last night and it runs great.
Thanks,Joe
SNKEBIT
Spending $$ on Mopars
I am old school but FI is the shiznit. Anybody who says carbed is better, well, living in the past. No offense to any one. Fuel injected is sssooooooooooo much better in every way. The tuning is the secret. Pay someone who knows what they are doing, you will never regret it. 
rayer:
rayer:
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Hey Joe, thanks for the encouragement. Your replies have definitely kept us from getting too discouraged. I'm almost certain that we'll be contacting Rich at FASTMAN EFI after we sort out most of the bugs. My son returned to Des Moines last Wednesday but I've been talking it over with him on the phone. The $250 charge sounded steep for an internet correspondence session but after we thought about it we realized we'd likely spend as much or more taking the car to someone else. We had left that last tuner's shop feeling we'd wasted money with someone that knew almost zero about the FAST system. FASTMAN sure seems more knowledgeable.
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
I am old school but FI is the shiznit. Anybody who says carbed is better, well, living in the past. No offense to any one. Fuel injected is sssooooooooooo much better in every way. The tuning is the secret. Pay someone who knows what they are doing, you will never regret it.
You know Mitch, we've definitely had second thoughts about the conversion after reading so many people having problems with it. Our own experiences have probably been similar to those folks. If it wasn't for guys like Joe that went through the frustration and eventually got it to work (and work REALLY well) we'd probably have a carb back on the car now.
There's no doubt it's been a struggle but we've been slowly learning more & more as we go. I'm glad we didn't take the car in and have someone else set it up right after we bought it. They say you learn from your mistakes and it's true. We still haven't mastered the FAST efi yet but we know much more about it than when we started. Most likely we'll have FASTMAN walk us through the final tune but we'll have a better understanding of his steps when we do.
I don't pretend to know everything when it comes to cars (or anything else) but I'd like to think I'm not becoming one of those people that has someone else do all the work for them. There's nothing wrong with going to others when you run into a brick wall but I think we're still a few feet away from hitting it.
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Yeah, I was really surprised to see the action on them hoses, too! I thought the mufflers would smoothen the puffs out but no. I also tried wrapping a blanket around them to keep them in place but it didn't work for long.
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
I'm hoping we won't have too much work in the garage that will involve a running vehicle. I'm going to try to get by with the flexible duct work for now. If we hadn't decided to move I'd look at a more permanent solution. The transmission blanket is heavy enough to control most of the movement.
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SNKEBIT
Spending $$ on Mopars
I guess I didn't exactly make myself clear on this subject. I wasn't bashing your efforts at all, I encourage that. Learning everything you can about what you are working on is paramount to doing it correctly. Having said that, I have short term memory issues that make it really difficult to "learn" new things. (accident related)
I am a pretty smart guy but teaching myself to "learn" a computer, (which is what you are trying to do, somewhat,) is near impossible without ALOT of time spent.
That is one of the reasons for having someone that does this on a regular basis and knows what they are doing, do the job. I have been down the same road you are on right now many times. Finally came to the conclusion that it's FARRR CHEAPER to have an expert do it for two main reasons.
1. All the crap going on in my life doesn't permit the cost of time loss/ gain in the endeavor. Plus, I am always second guessing myself if I have everything in correct parameters.
2. One little miscalculation anywhere in the set up or drivability can be disastrous. It may act and drive alright but really isn't. Setups that took me weeks of studying and work led to bad outcomes with thousands of dollars flushed down the shitter. :violent1: So, not only did I loose time in the study aspect but also monetary repairing some things that would have only cost me a few hundred if I hadn't been a stubborn stingy fool who thought that tuning isn't that hard, I can do it, anyone can...............
One more thing, tuning a car to get the most HP out of it is an art. But realize it is tuned to the nats ***, no room for error. On a street car, this is stupid. One tank of bad gas and the engine is junk. Saw this numerous times.............
Just putting out words of wisdom here. Not saying anybody here can't teach themselves how to tune a car. I am just saying, don't fool yourself into thinking it's not that hard......
Oh, and don't forget drivability. A lot of people just tune the dyno, bad idea.
Hope this helps.
:cheers:
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
I am a pretty smart guy but teaching myself to "learn" a computer, (which is what you are trying to do, somewhat,) is near impossible without ALOT of time spent.
That is one of the reasons for having someone that does this on a regular basis and knows what they are doing, do the job. I have been down the same road you are on right now many times. Finally came to the conclusion that it's FARRR CHEAPER to have an expert do it for two main reasons.
1. All the crap going on in my life doesn't permit the cost of time loss/ gain in the endeavor. Plus, I am always second guessing myself if I have everything in correct parameters.
2. One little miscalculation anywhere in the set up or drivability can be disastrous. It may act and drive alright but really isn't. Setups that took me weeks of studying and work led to bad outcomes with thousands of dollars flushed down the shitter. :violent1: So, not only did I loose time in the study aspect but also monetary repairing some things that would have only cost me a few hundred if I hadn't been a stubborn stingy fool who thought that tuning isn't that hard, I can do it, anyone can...............
One more thing, tuning a car to get the most HP out of it is an art. But realize it is tuned to the nats ***, no room for error. On a street car, this is stupid. One tank of bad gas and the engine is junk. Saw this numerous times.............
Just putting out words of wisdom here. Not saying anybody here can't teach themselves how to tune a car. I am just saying, don't fool yourself into thinking it's not that hard......
Oh, and don't forget drivability. A lot of people just tune the dyno, bad idea.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Mitch. Don't worry, I didn't take your advice the wrong way. You & Joe just pointed out the plus side to having those with expertise help out in these situations. Sometimes it's difficult to convey my reaction when I respond.
Although I consider myself to be somewhat savvy when it comes time to work with computers (I've built several of my own), I realize that the hardware isn't as much of an issue as the interface with the program. - And of course some programs are written much more 'user friendly' than others.
It sounds like FASTMAN is very familiar with the way FAST has their program written and knows a great deal about tuning. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the way this system reacts to the inputs. The various tables that can be modified may or may not be making changes to the tune based upon the proper sequence in which they're accessed. I'm hoping to become familiar enough to understand their program interface before passing the ball off to someone else.
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
I made a bit more progress on the pinball machine. I needed to update most of the old signs so they fit with the new theme. This is the metal framework located at the bottom of the playing field.
BEFORE:
WITH NEW SIGNS:
WITH NEW SIGNS & A METAL-FLAKE ORANGE BACKGROUND:
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BEFORE:
WITH NEW SIGNS:
WITH NEW SIGNS & A METAL-FLAKE ORANGE BACKGROUND:
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Sah-weet!
Now go to bed.
03JeepJeep
It's a hoot!
Straight Gasser paint, love it!
1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
Aww Mom......
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1967 'cuda
Dropped on Head as a Baby
I've been shying away from the idea of using one large image for the playing surface. Although I think it would look good, there are a ton of graphics pertaining to scoring that should be kept. Without them it's difficult to understand how to gain points. With them whatever background I'd choose would really broken up.
I decided to start by blacking out all of the original graphics from the SWING ALONG theme while leaving the scoring information intact. Next I will have to figure out which images to fit in the spaces to decorate this thing. It's pretty boring without a more detailed background. Oh, I also printed some checkerboard vinyl overlays to install on the 1/2" wide raised walls.
The 'pop cap' bumpers will still be getting the fancy L.E.D. treatment. For now I've printed out some car pics for the tops of them.
There are 6 plastic pieces that I've re-made out of Lexan. The original ones had the SWING ALONG theme on them and were warped. Due to their odd shapes It's hard to fit decent looking graphics on them. I'm not sure whether or not I'll stay with the race helmets on them.
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I decided to start by blacking out all of the original graphics from the SWING ALONG theme while leaving the scoring information intact. Next I will have to figure out which images to fit in the spaces to decorate this thing. It's pretty boring without a more detailed background. Oh, I also printed some checkerboard vinyl overlays to install on the 1/2" wide raised walls.
The 'pop cap' bumpers will still be getting the fancy L.E.D. treatment. For now I've printed out some car pics for the tops of them.
There are 6 plastic pieces that I've re-made out of Lexan. The original ones had the SWING ALONG theme on them and were warped. Due to their odd shapes It's hard to fit decent looking graphics on them. I'm not sure whether or not I'll stay with the race helmets on them.
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