injection- history here... a little...

[estorhok@domain.elided]

Now I get to show how much of a engine geek I really am- I am pretty 
fascinated with fuel injection systems.  Of course the first ones were
for diesels, and naturally early gas injections were based on diesels.

Fast forword to late '60's/ early '70s

And then there were 3... SPICA, Bosch, and what BMW used (I can't recall the	name right now, and I am too lazy too look it up..).

spica was based on diesel, of course, but when you look at what it can do
with rather simple logic- it is pretty high performance.

Bosch and the other one were a bit different- they tried to measure airflow
to meter the injection as opposed to throttle angle.  More robust than spica,
but was limited in how much fuel can be delivered.  For our street cars, it
wouldn't have mattered.  For race cars- well there's a good reason all the
33's, GTAm, late GTA's, F1's etc used a version of the spica.  Especially
since most of them are on/off switches anyway.

Progressing into the 80's: Bosch managed to "update" the simple system with
some better measureing pieces, along with one significant piece- the O2
sensor- still pretty cheap, but very effective on engines whose output
emissiosn weren't bad (like that early '90's Jetta). They also came up with
K jetronic system on the Spiders and V6's, a little more sophisticated, more
for the high priced/ high performance engines.

Funny thing happens here which kind of leads to nowhere.  Ponder this- manf A
makes a mechanical fuel injection system, learns great detail about it for
the 12 or so years it is in production; while manuf B does carburators, and
does know them inside and out.  Both decide to make electronic fuel injection.
Who does it better?  Of course A does (Bosch and Alfa Romeo).  B would be
Ford, GM, etc who think it is cheaper to make their own as opposed to
buying it.

Surprised the Alfa Romeo made thier own EFI?  So was I, until I though about
the above paragraph.  Some of you AROC USA members will remember Fred D's 
articles, well perhaps correspondence with Alfa concering this- For more
info read SAE paper 850290.  When I read it, I was amazed by the level of
sophisitcation in it!!  Alfa was REALLY paying attention to what they were
doing, to the point that other EFI manuf didn't pick up on things they 
thought of until well into the '90's!! (really)  Remember the caddy' 4-6-8?
Alfa did it too, but with some pretty sweet electronics where the driver
might not have noticed what was going on...

Well, I guess that is enough partial history now.  But it is suffice to say
that if Alfa actually put this into production in '85, then they would be
one of the world leaders in EFI right now.  And since that is what I do for
a living- it is interesting for me.  

Sorry for the long note...

Eric Storhok
Ann Arbor, MI

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End of alfa-digest V7 #525
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