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R32rennsport's Amazon Thread

Finally found the original pictures Luke had of the car when he first found it before getting back on the road and selling it to me. It's came a long way baby!



 
Thought I'd share a few sunset pictures from a drive my wife and I took on CA Highway 1 between Big Sur and Morro Bay last Sunday and some fall flavor from my neighborhood. The Amazon is running strong, it's been on daily commuting and weekend duties since early October since my daily is down for major repairs. I've put well over a thousand miles on it now in that time, which included a one day tour of 500+ miles in the Sequoia/Kern region starting from the coast to the high desert, then up the eastern backside of the Sierra mountain range, crossing over 9,000 from sea level, and finally back into the California valley back to the coast. Let me tell you though, Weber carburetors do not like a 9,000 foot jolt in altitude, I probably could have gotten out and jogged faster. Car is solid though. The more I drive it as a "normal" car though the more I find myself wanting to improve cabin comfort and braking performance.













 
My apologies, this has turned into a pictorial history thread now. The car has been super reliable. Haven't had a need to do much but drive it and enjoy it. I have the 142 and 914 taking up all my spare time right now anyhow. Still planning an engine overhaul for some more compression and a cam change but it's probably going to wait until after Davis.

We had some pretty rare snow fall along the coastal area below 1000 feet so I got my butt out of bed early to go exploring before it all melted away.







 
Wow, last update was March? Well truth be told I've just been enjoying this one and have also been distracted by many other side projects as well as summertime traveling with my family. That's all changed as of this week though as I just acquired a set of Jenvey Heritage throttle bodies from PaddyGarcia that previous belonged to MikeJr. I'm determined to make these operational on this car by spring time mark my words! That being said this is totally out of my wheel house and I know I have many ways I can go about this project. Luckily I have the intake and throttle linkage in place already but that leaves figuring out what stand alone to go with as well as redesigning a complete fueling system solution and adding a return line back to the tank. I do like the idea of using the Yoshifab CAS adapter setup rather than a crank trigger setup as an optical pickup seems more accurate. But hey, that's where all of you come in to give me your two cents! I'm also going to take this opportunity to build and engine run in stand for mock up prior to transferring the new system into the car, something I've talked about doing for years and now with multiple engines in my possession it will be a nice piece of equipment to have. As far as the current powerplant in the car it will be getting a complete revision as well as many of you know I've lamented since day one that I haven't been happy with it, it's always been just OK but I know I left lots on the table when I first built this back in 2018. So there ya go, progress will be slow at first but I'll keep ya updated along the way. I may start a separate EFI thread in the performance section to better organize that journey for those that would like to follow my successes and failures along that path.







 
I salute you and look forward to seeing those TBs working. As I mentioned, your car was an inspiration for mine.

My plan for FI was to make it look as much like analog as possible. Use a Megasquirt only for injection and leave the 123 distributor in place, since that looks right and has a programmable curve. It looks like you already have a coolant temp sensor tapped in the head, so that's good.

It also looks like you have vacuum ports in your manifold. For idle control you could use the manifold ports, or you'll find vacuum hose barbs in the bag that can be fitted to the Jenveys by drilling through the already-threaded hole underneath the throttle body.

My car has a second fuel tank that I wanted to integrate so I wouldn't have just modified the tank for a pump, but you can probably do that. If you don't want that you can look at the combined surge tank/pump units from FiTech, Hyperfuel and Edelbrock. They can be fed with an electric or mechanical fuel pump. I'm pretty sure that the Edelbrock at least would fit behind a front fender.
 
If you’re wanting to efi, I would suggest the CAS for easy install. But if you aren’t going super crazy, you can lock a distributor and use that as a simple single coil programmable pickup. You get tunable advance, and stock looks.

Also, I’m in the process of prototyping some intake parts. Including a set of modern injector holders for d/k jet heads, and dcoe manifolds with injector bosses for carb head conversion. Those are on the list for test fits over the winter. Let me know if you’d like to test for some parts.
 
Dang, I'm getting really lazy at posting here!

Phase II in progress.

I recently sold my long time VW R32 track car along with the pair of Amazons I picked up last August. With those funds available to me I'm moving forward with having the vintage Volvo master Cam at Swedish Relics build a 2.6 stroked B20 engine using Tinus Tuning components to replace my current 2130cc big bore power plant. The 2130cc will get some revisions as well and I'll likely keep it on hand as a "spare". The donor core for this new build is a B20F out of a low mileage 1974 145 automatic, 8 bolt crank and big main caps. Stay tuned for progress!



Along with the engine I'll be upgrading other areas of the vehicle, namely the brake system as well driveline/rear axle.

Phase III holding. The EFI is currently being shelved at the moment, no progress there but I'll likely use the 2130cc engine as an out of vehicle test unit for setup/mockup purposes.
 
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R32RennSport said:
Appreciate that, I'd like to think so, it'll round out the car pretty well. Should surprise a few of the other guys out on club drives and rallies I'm sure.

I'm shooting for something like Overcrest Rally next year or Motherlode 400, etc.
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I was just on the Motherlode 400 a week and a half ago, it is a great drive through the Sierra's.

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Have many folks EFI'd these old pushrod engines? I can attest to the benefits of Megasquirt fuel..... converted my 70 Malibu and the original 350 engine. Tis a joy to have it start in any condition with that EFI brain..... I went fuel only and kept the Pertronix converted ignition.

Love your Amazon, beautiful car.
 
polaris said:
I was just on the Motherlode 400 a week and a half ago, it is a great drive through the Sierra's.
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Hey Ben! Thanks for the pictures. Looks like you and Ramon and Joe had a great time. My coworker Tucker was riding with Joe in the 142 and said the whole thing was a blast. I was really bummed I couldn't go but someone has to run the shop.
 
DET17 said:
Have many folks EFI'd these old pushrod engines? I can attest to the benefits of Megasquirt fuel..... converted my 70 Malibu and the original 350 engine. Tis a joy to have it start in any condition with that EFI brain..... I went fuel only and kept the Pertronix converted ignition.

Love your Amazon, beautiful car.
Click to expand...
EFI on these are certainly not common in the modern sense, a lot of retrofitting of the D Jet with modern stuff but stand alone on individual throttle bodies is exceedingly rare.

Thank you!
 
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