I'm wondering how many people have swapped out the TPI on there 305 or 350's for carb and what the result was. What are the positives and negatives of doing it? My friend has a 90 IROC and has been having nothing but probs with it and I'm wondering if that is the best route to take. Thanks!

 

I would not consider it. Spend the money and have the TPI repaired correctly. The carb conversion is not cheap and is labor intensive.

My old TPI was a hunk of junk until I went to the bosh style injectors. I had them cleand and flow matched before I installed them. It ran perfectly afterward.

 

I may not agree completely with sorg's arguments, but I agree with the conclusion.

Most who do the conversion are old-school types that aren't willing to learn the newer technologies. Others, though, look at the prices of performance TPI parts vs. performance carb parts and recognize that for pure HP, carb is the cheaper route.

I don't know if I'd call the conversion "labor intensive", but you'd better have some basic tuning knowledge (you can't plug a laptop into basic carb setups and tune it), or you'll be just as far over your head as you were with limited EFI knowledge.

For a daily driver, I'd stick with TPI. I have a TPI setup (well, most of one) in the attic of my garage, and considered putting it on when I did the mods back in Nov '01. Having already done the V6 to V8 conversion with the carb setup (not knowing that wasn't an economic undertaking), I didn't feel up to about the same level of effort going from carb to TPI. But, conversion from TPI to non-CC carb is not nearly as hard.

 

My uncle converted a 5spd 4 barrel 84 Z28 to auto TPI a about7 years ago or so and it was much better. But I think it is more his mismatched parts than anything. It's not a daily driver or anything, but he likes to be able to get in it and go. Right now it runs, but it is a dog basically. I know I like my EFI on my Mustang and would never consider getting rid of it. I would assume he could spend the same $$ or less to just get it running good with the EFI and stay that way. Just thought I'd ask. I thin he needs to get a chip for it made to his mods.

 

I went from TPI to carb. And yes, I am the old school type even at 25 yrs. old. I did it due to money. I didn't have all the money I was going to need to make the TPI perform like my carb setup does. Cold starts are not a problem, I don't drive it when its cold. Gas milage isn't a problem, I have driven it 300 miles in almost a year. At the time I didn't want to learn how to burn chips, and diagnose ECM codes. But now I am thinking of some sort of turbo setup, and I want to use in on some sort of FI, not a carb b/c FI in my mind is easier to tune, and somewhat safer on parts if something runs lean, or isn't right. Due to the fact I want FI for that, it will be a long time before I can b/c of the expense.