1937 Plymouth Upgrades

With the immediate jeep projects completed, its time to pull my moms hot rod into the bay for some much needed TLC.
My mom calls her car "Ruby".....
Specs are:
1937 Plymouth P4
ZZ4 engine
700R4 trans
Ford 8.8 rear 3.73 gears with tru trac
QA1 suspension
Mustang 2 front cross member
Wilwood discs front and rear
Factory chassis boxed with fabricated chassis integrated for suspension
AC, remote locks, power seats ect.....

What its in for:
Edelbrock pro flow 4 fuel injection
Serpentine belt system
Brakes..... pedal is hard..... brakes don't work.....
Drivers door side glass is cracked
Stereo upgrade

 

Your mom has a pretty cool 'grocery getter'! Hip mom!

 

It is actually her summertime daily, she has put about 20,000 miles on it since we bought it a while back.

 

Right off the bat we have a problem!
The stock ZZ4 intake is your run of the mill low rise preformer line, similar to Edelbrocks entry level.......
The Pro Flow 4 intake is based off of an Edelbrock Victor Jr intake. The fuel rails, elevated water crossover and outlet at the front of the intake is going to interfere with the AC compressor as well as the Alternator.

 

Old school says no to new school. It seems there should be ways to make it work and you said you were changing the drive on it. Otherwise go TBI or a more modern engine.

 

What!! You're not going with Howell EFI Kyle?

 

I’m already gainfully employed.
I don’t need a second unpaid job where I figure out how to make Howells stuff work, then share my labor with the world for Howell to later pirate.

 

I have been exploring serpentine drive setups for a while now. The single belt driven AC compressor setup that is currently on the car is a constant battle of adjusting and belt squealing.....
The multiport setup is forcing me to do both upgrades at once... so its not really a big deal, just unexpected at the time.
Pro flow 4 systems are basically an LS style fuel system for older engines. The complete kit includes a distributor and manages the engine just about the same as the stand alone LS style programs.

 

They make them for 304/360/390 jeep engines too....
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/edl-35650#applications

 

Oh, I already have that kit for my 443” AMC engine that’s going in the AMX.

 

So, you can buy a bolt on kit for just about any old engine and slap it on there? "Welcome to the worrrllllddddd of TOMORROW".


Thats just insane I say! What will they think of next? Leaf blower blowers?! Seriously, thats cool.

 

Same system I have on my 3B engine. I reversed the fuel rails so the cross-over is up front and the fuel lines/regulator are on the rear. Makes for more space and got stuff out of the way of my high mount right side alternator.


I'm completely sold on dry manifolds/port injection but that Victor Jr manifold absolutely sucks for making any bottom end torque. That is basically the same manifold used with the ProFlo 2 I had on the previous sbc. It did work as the 381 would pull down to 300 rpm but probably only because there were no fuel separation/distribution issues with the port injection. On my DynoSim runs, that manifold is costing me about 40 ft/lbs of bottom end torque and more importantly, moving the peak torque up a 1000 rpms. Now that I will have the new engine all back apart, I may revisit that. In my case, if I could find a Chevy TPI based system that flowed a little better than 700 cfm it would be perfect but those apparently don't exist and I don't think 5 or 6 K for a custom Wilson is on the table, not even on the floor. Sort of a band-aid, but I have a 5" velocity stack on top of the throttle body along with the swoopy bottom the air cleaner. That stack also positioned the air cleaner to clear the low profile large HEI style distributor cap.

 

I am already thinking about doing just what you did with the fuel rails, your setup looks excellent!
I figure the Victor Jr manifold is giving up a bit on the bottom end with this lil' 350, but my mom drives like a grandma and rarely will even get into the secondaries with her current carb setup.
The AMX engine will be more suited for the Jr manifold.

 

What that looked like in finish form before it all came apart again.

 

No pirates here that I'm aware of. Though there are times I limp around like I have a peg-leg. Not sure if that qualifies.

 

Have you ever walked into a room and felt like everyone was staring at you and they knew something you didn't?

There's quite a number of members who are biting their tongue over in that thread where you came here begging to copy someone's crank sensor bracket.
You see, I gave credit to the person who helped me get my TBI system to work properly. That person wasn't looking to profit off of their time or me, they felt bad for me that I was mislead in thinking that Howell was offering a product kit that worked properly with my odd fire engine without product modification or additional sourced parts. That person even informed Howell at one time that their system as sold would never run on an odd fire v6 as the fuel injection system was intended.

You said it yourself over in that other thread, "I work in the Mad Scientist Dungeon at Howell EFI." So I wouldn't expect that Troy at Howell ever said to you "Hey that Norcal69 guy, we here at Howell have actually referred some really angry customers to him and he helped our customers fix our system free of charge." These customers often use strings of 4 letter words to describe the company you work for, words that are off limits on this forum. When I tell them that they need to install a crank sensor to get the system to run correctly, the customer response is always, "What the ****! I was lead to believe this was bolt on and go!" One such person I helped had been fighting his system for a while before I even bought my system. Matt and Troy cannot claim they didn't know that a crank sensor was needed. They tried to mask the uneven firing signal with the very fragile tach filter and an absurdly high idle level.

So you come along asking to copy something that a hobbyist made out of necessity/frustration and now your company intends to profit off of it.
The information I have posted on this forum is intended to help fellow Jeep hobbyist's make Howell's disappointing product work to the customers expectation. Possibly the coolest thing about google is how a couple search terms can pull up a forum as unimportant as this ECJ5 Forum. Quite a number of Howells customers have stumbled upon this forum while trying to make their TBI system run properly. There are Jeep owners who join this forum specifically to get more information from me before purchasing a fuel injection kit. When asked if I would purchase from Howell again, I recommend anyone looking to buy a GM TBI system for their odd fire v6 towards a competing company that sells the product significantly cheaper and in my experience offers far better tech support.

While it might not seem like it, this is actually a very cordial response. I realize that you are just an employee who was given a task by your boss and you are trying to do the best job you can for your boss your approach however is completely wrong. I spent nearly a year getting all the bugs worked out of the Howell system I purchased. Troy continually blamed my jeep and components for the system not running correctly. He had me jump through hoops like compression test, changing intake manifold gaskets, changing complete ignition systems, Matt told me the system worked with Pertronix, Troy said I needed HEI. I ended up spending allot of money at the direction of Howell and in the end it turned out that nothing was wrong with my jeep, Howell was wrong the entire time! It became evident that between the person who wrote the tune I have now and the other members on this forum that helped me, they knew far more about how these systems work than anyone at Howell.
Please go about your business without commenting on any of my threads.
I will continue working my unpaid job of helping fellow vintage jeep enthusiasts trouble shoot the products they purchase from Howell.
To date I have helped 225 v6, 258 i6 and 304 v8 customers via phone and email keep their Howell systems going when the tech department was unreliable or unable to find a solution.
After all keeping old jeeps on the road is what this forum is about.

 

Very well said. Thank you.

 

I don't know the whole long sordid story of what happened, and didn't mean to dig up any bad vibes. But begging? No. Asking for help to fix a problem, sure. Copy? No. Just asked for dimensions from those that know first hand. I had/have no intention of causing grief on any thread, yours included, and I made the response above with obvious humor. It was intended that way, at least. This issue has been around long before I was informed of it, I thought that connecting with the forums would be the most productive way to solve it. Evidently you disagree. I have no intention of hijacking this thread, so I'll honor your request and leave you to it.

 

I am fortunate to be among the people that @Norcal69 helped with my Howell EFI.
His advice was elegantly simple and to date, has fixed the Jeep's issue.
Thank you Kyle for your time, patience and follow thru.