In Defence of Spica

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@domain.elided>]

Les Singh asks:

> None of the Euro spec GTVs that I know of
> had Spica. Wonder why?!

Um... because they didn't have smog laws, so they could get away with
carbs?

> Since then I have heard from others as well as
> Chris Prael that Wes Ingram works wonders - but again this is a modified
> unit and not a standard one, or have I got it wrong?

In my experience, you've got it wrong -- in fact, I'd hazard a guess
that it's mostly *poorly* modified units that caused the bad reputation
in the first place.  Yes, Wes *does* offer performance modifications to
the Spica system, but he also provides rebuilt stock units, as far as I
know.  

The main problem with the Spica unit was that it was undocumented from
the factory, who feared reprisals from the U.S. EPA and their minions if
any information was leaked about how to modify the factory settings.  So
people tried messing around with it to make the cars go faster.  Well,
you can mess with Webers and Dell'ortos (or Dellortos or whatever the
punctuation of the month is), swapping in emulsion tubes and main chokes
and accelerator pumps and the rest, and if you make it so the car won't
run at ALL, you can just put the old stuff back and say that Alfa got it
right at the factory.  And there are books, like Pat Braden's on Webers,
which will get you pointed in the right direction if you get too far out
of whack.

But... imagine there was no Braden's book (or Passini's) on Webers. 
Imagine further that there were no charts of jet sizes, you had no way
of knowing whether a 160 or a 120 was bigger (I mean, a 16-gauge shotgun
has a smaller bore than a 12-gauge... which is it?), and you had no way
of knowing whether you *should* put in a bigger one or not because there
were no charts and graphs and dyno results, and... you should be getting
the idea.  Because that was the state of Spica knowledge in this country
- -- almost NOBODY knew anything beyond the factory settings that came on
the car.  Couple this with people who grew up fiddling with carbs, and
you no doubt had a lot of fiddled-with Spica units by folks who were, by
definition and intention, ignorant of the device's workings.  

Alfa (or at least Autodelta) certainly believed in Spica; starting in
March 1968, all the 105 racing coupes went over to Spica, dropping the
twin Webers in favor of the more precise fuel metering that the
mechanical fuel injection offered.  It makes sense; look at the
Kugelfischer units on contemporary BMWs, or a decade earlier when
Mercedes went to mechanical fuel injection on the 300SL and got 25 bhp
more in the road car than in the carbureted race car it was based on. 
(We'll just gloss over the alleged 290 bhp that Denis Jenkinson says
Moss' 1955 300SLR produced... :-)

One thing that I find thrilling as hell, for some weird reason: looking
under the hood of my 1974 Alfa Spider and seeing the sticker reading
"Emissions control system: fuel injection."  That's it.  No air pumps,
no gulp valves, no throttle positioners, no wonky vacuum lines, no
thermostatic float-bowl diaphragm adjusters, none of the crud that I had
to put up with (or remove, and risk the wrath of the California Air
Resources Board) when I used to have British sports cars.  The fuel
injection simply works well enough on its own that it doesn't need the
compensatory crutches of other, lesser cars of the day.  It's a
magnificent, elegant system, and best of all it works better than
carburetors (given the same state of tune): no flat spots, no bobbling
in hard cornering, no leaky float-bowl covers, no hiccuping stumble,
just power whenever and wherever you ask for it.  

I'm a convert.  

But Les says one more thing that can't go uncommented-on:

> This is a great topic!

And how, mate!  Keep it up!

- --Scott Fisher

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