I love the car, I think its one of the best designs ever, But I have 2 friends that have Toyota power in them now cause they got tired of tuning them.. Two of my pals bought them brand new, they spent almost half of the first two years with them at the dealer... Of course this is Oregon and it rains here... And Prince Lucas seems to hate water....
The other issue at least in my part of the world is that there are few guys left who really understand carbs. Try and get a good Webber rebuild including throttle shaft bushings these days... Arg... I used ot have a 69 911 with the Webbers,, was almost opera when you got into them in the twistys..
I am kind of a track rat, I work on a lot of road race and dirt track cars with everythign from Hillborn to Tek3's and The last 5 or ten years I've noticed carb tech is dying... Too few guys learning young and the old guys are retiring. Since Holley bought the Webber carb division the quality has tanked...
The SDS will never really idle smoothly. It is a racing application unit, it does not have a linear idle control circuit and controlling it with a fixed throttle stop is marginal. But on track when your hitting it hard in each corner or drag racing they rock. AEM is the other economical option...
Dave
nuvolarrossa:
Thanks for the pics! There is something about the old school simplicity that I really like.
it is not only very clean but the webers/dellortos rarely cause problems. They probably sound great too!
pdxmotorhead: I have a '85 Lotus Esprit Turbo that has the blow through set-up from the factory. The carbs have never been apart or rebuilt since they came out of the factory. The only thing I have done is to increase idle jet size to eliminate lean running due to addition of ethanol in the gasoline. If you consider it has been 26 years with no service and no problems, I would have to say that they 'got it right'. How many e30 fuel injection systems have had at least one component changed in the past 26 years or required a fair bit of troubleshooting to sort out a problem?
I agree that the cornering is an issue for the track but there is a simple mod involving drilling a small passage in the float bowl which virtually eliminates this problem.
My friend has a '80 Esprit that he has used the SDS system on, along w/ turbocharging and intercooling. He hasn't been able to tune his car well enough to drive it much for the past four years with the SDS. Perhaps they are more suited to racing where it is typically on or off throttle?
I realize these situations aren't always the norm, only my specific experiences. Plus I have a set of beautiful DLHA 45's on the shelf to be put to good use!