I never did like TBI in general. I'll explain why. You can discount my experience, since there are many cars running around with a TBI and they seem to function OK, but there is a reason TBI was short-lived and replaced with the more complex, more expensive multi port EFI systems.

The injectors are designed to have a conical spray pattern such that most of the fuel is in the outer ring of the cone and delivered to the outer periphery of the throttle plates where the shearing action of the airflow helps to further break up and disperse the fuel droplets coming from the injectors mounted above the throttle plates. All well and good at low throttle openings. At high airflow like WOT the air velocity "pulls" the conical pattern down, compressing it into a more "pencil-like" stream centered in the middle of the throttle body bore. Again, no problem, if you are at WOT. The pencil stream hits the opened throttle blade(s) and gets dispersed into the intake manifold. The problem is when the throttle is near to WOT but not all the way there. At that condition there is still enough airflow to pull the conical spray down into a pencil-like stream, BUT, since the throttle is slightly closed the stream impinges onto the top of the plate, gets deflected by the plate (in the case of the 2V-V6 engine I was dyno testing) and most of the fuel gets diverted into the cylinders at the rear of the engine. I noticed at 90% of throttle opening the air/fuel ratios on each individual cylinder varied by as much as five air/fuel ratios! That means a rear cylinder had a A/F ratio of, say, 10:1 while a front cylinder had a ratio of 15:1 at the same time. I confirmed my A/F readings by taking high speed movies of the injectors on a running engine.

Like I said, many cars are using TBI, and it was definitely a step up from the problems associated with a carburetor, but if you are going to go with a computer controlled system why not get one (multi-port) that functions well - under all conditions.


FORD 300 inline six - THE BEST KEPT SECRET IN DRAG RACING!