[Frank R]

A friend of mine picked up a 58 Fuel Injection. It was sitting on a adaptor that made it fit 65 and up heads. I'm guessing that it's an aftermarket piece. Does anyone know who made these adaptors or have any information?

[Chief of the 60's]

Seems homemade to me. Looks like someone took an intake and cut it down. I do not know why anyone would have opted to do that. Those early fuel injections barely worked when they were new.

[Frank R]

Originally Posted by Chief of the 60's

Seems homemade to me. Looks like someone took an intake and cut it down. I do not know why anyone would have opted to do that. Those early fuel injections barely worked when they were new.

My first thought was that it was a home made. But It appears to be a one piece casting made of aluminum. I could not find any welds or grind marks.

[Douglas Willinger]

Was that because the basic architecture was undesirable or rather due to the relatively primitive electronics?

Looks like a beautiful piece. I wonder what its potential would be on any of the later Pontiac engines?

Originally Posted by Chief of the 60's

Seems homemade to me. Looks like someone took an intake and cut it down. I do not know why anyone would have opted to do that. Those early fuel injections barely worked when they were new.

[tom s]

Would make a good start for a vintage looking-EFI setup.Was worth way more before chopped up I think.Tom

[Formulajones]

There is a guy local to me that runs one on his Pontiac. At first he ran it as the original mechanical unit, but has since done a conversion to multiport electronic fuel injection on it, yet it still looks vintage. It's a pretty cool piece.

[Douglas Willinger]

Wow!

That is the sort of stuff among what I dream about.

Extra information on this, and any pictures?

Another great idea, if made commercially available, would be particularly sensible for new low volume automobile industry continuation-mod of new automobiles resembling long ago established classics: continuation-mod-classics.

Let's see it happen, perhaps starting with the fan-created 1967 GTO variant of the 2 door hardtop wagon.

Originally Posted by Formulajones

There is a guy local to me that runs one on his Pontiac. At first he ran it as the original mechanical unit, but has since done a conversion to multiport electronic fuel injection on it, yet it still looks vintage. It's a pretty cool piece.

[Chief of the 60's]

Unless you have all the parts (and there are a lot of different parts), the only person that would pay any money for one is a person with a fuelie '58 and those people are dying off. What is shown would be lucky to draw $1500.00 but is closer to $1000.00. A guy I know has been trying to get $3500.00 for his incomplete '57 unit for at least 10 years now. Converting one to EFI may just work and certainly would work a lot better than a stock one did.

[Formulajones]

It's in a blue 66 or 67 Lemans. I'm sure I've snapped pics of it in the past but I quickly went through some pics and didn't see it right off hand.

What I can do though, there are a handful of car shows coming up around town in the next couple weeks. He'll likely be at one of them and I can snap some fresh pictures. He was just at the BOP show with it in March down in Scottsdale. I've seen the car for years around here, and just noticed this past March he converted it to electronic injection.

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by Chief of the 60's

Seems homemade to me. Looks like someone took an intake and cut it down. I do not know why anyone would have opted to do that. Those early fuel injections barely worked when they were new.

Interesting, this FI unit made 675 HP on the dyno with boost and all original parts.
Just have to know something about Factory FI and Boost.

Tom V

The owner and I drove the vehicle with the engine in the picture from Detroit to Indy, ran on the track there, went to the Street Machine Nationals, and a couple of days later drove it back home. Not a trip around the block vehicle.

[Frank R]

Originally Posted by tom s

Would make a good start for a vintage looking-EFI setup.Was worth way more before chopped up I think.Tom

The fuel injection unit doesn’t appear to have been cut or altered. It sits on top of the adaptor and used stock gaskets. You would need a water crossover from an early one intake.

[242177P]

Originally Posted by Chief of the 60's

Those early fuel injections barely worked when they were new.

Originally Posted by Tom Vaught

Interesting, this FI unit ...

Uh huh. That unit is a 63.

[Tom Vaught]

OK, I agree with that. And the 63 FI unit probably would not have worked well with Boost IF the person working on it knew little about tuning the FI system.

But the Basic Parts are very similar. So the issue is who does the tuning, just like carbs, vs the 58 unit is a POS.
And Pontiac did not get much of a chance to improve their unit.

Tom V.

[242177P]

Originally Posted by Tom Vaught

OK, I agree with that. And the 63 FI unit probably would not have worked well with Boost IF the person working on it knew little about tuning the FI system.

But the Basic Parts are very similar. So the issue is who does the tuning, just like carbs, vs the 58 unit is a POS.
And Pontiac did not get much of a chance to improve their unit.

Tom V.

True, but back in the day there were very few people that knew what they were doing. The average Joe was nowhere near Mickey Thompson's level. It certainly didn't deserve the bad reputation, but it did earn it.

The 58's plenum looks a lot larger than say a 57 Chevy's.

[242177P]

And that "adapter" used to be a dual plane intake. Look at the port entry angles.

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by 242177P

True, but back in the day there were very few people that knew what they were doing. The average Joe was nowhere near Mickey Thompson's level. It certainly didn't deserve the bad reputation, but it did earn it.

The 58's plenum looks a lot larger than say a 57 Chevy's.

My Uncle had a Head Mechanic named Delbert Forrest.
Delbert taught Engine and Driveline classes to the troops in World War II.

"Del" Forrest was a smart guy. Best Q-Jet car I ever road in he tuned.
Del worked on the 1958 FI Pontiacs because he was a Pontiac/ Cadillac/GMC Dealership
Mechanic. All of the other dealerships brought their Pontiac FI vehicles to him.

My uncle and Del made a lot of money on that deal in 1958/1959.

Most of the owners did not want to mess around with dealing with two dealerships and Del's work schedule so they had the FI units removed and a Carb system installed.
Del did that work too. He said the 58 Pontiac system was better vs the early Chevy system. Course in 1958 you has a 370 cid Pontiac engine vs the chevy 283 engine so the Plenum design and size obviously would be different.

Never could understand why Pontiac had the 'strap" on top of the Air Meter (right across the center).

Tom V.

[Formulajones]

Neat thing about those old mechanical fuel injection units was there ability to sense barometric pressure and adjust fuel supply accordingly on the fly. Cool tech for the time.

[Skip Fix]

One of my Dallas 409 buddies(has 2 409/427 Z-11 cars, and 65 Mopar factory Hemi SS car, a Chevy Mystery Motor) has a rare experimental 409 fuel injection setup. He had to machine a lot of parts and have some custom gaskets too as lots of pieces were "one of's ". So it could be an expensive deal to get up if a lot of parts missing.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by Skip Fix

One of my Dallas 409 buddies(has 2 409/427 Z-11 cars, and 65 Mopar factory Hemi SS car, a Chevy Mystery Motor) has a rare experimental 409 fuel injection setup. He had to machine a lot of parts and have some custom gaskets too as lots of pieces were "one of's ". So it could be an expensive deal to get up if a lot of parts missing.

Now that sounds really cool Skip!

[Formulajones]

It's not that these were bad units back in the day, it's that people didn't understand how they worked and couldn't service them. Putting a carb on was the easy way out.

Same argument can be made for new cars today, and in my opinion it's even worse today then it was in 1957. They've gotten so complicated you practically need an ASE certification to understand how things work. Most owners don't do any major repairs on their new cars today, and when the warranty runs out most just trade it in on another new car. Cars today make that mechanical fuel injection look pretty damn easy.