hey all, i just got an 89 rs that hasnt been on the road in 10 years, just did the fuel pump and filter and got her running.
im looking for feedback on whether or not its worth it to swap out to the performer intake, port the tbi and upgrade the injectors. i will also be ditching the exhaust manifold and installing hooker shorties. thanks in advance for the help
-Melyssa

 

It can’t hurt to get the injectors serviced. You can use a timing light as a strobe to see their spray pattern and look for dripping . A more free flowing exhaust will help the 305 breath. Can still get dyno dons at top down solutions.

 

No on the TBI mods at this point, injectors are likely fine....they are robust. You can "poor man's tune" the injectors delivery by modifying the fuel pressure regulator which works great...costs nothing.

I don't think that I'd spend money on a base Performer intake unless I were doing heads and cam. Or at least the cam. Headers, Y, cat back and a little "free mods"/tuning should make a welcome difference and you can play w/the car for a while like that.

 

On a stock engine, no need or improvement to be had by bumping fuel pressure.

 

Copy that.....
Is that still stock? Mine wanted more fuel after headers and exhaust...not sure why it wouldn't when you're making that big a change. "Feed it what it wants".

 

how were your fuel trims ? You used a heated o2 ?

 

i spent hours on these boards last night and i learned that heads off a 305 tpi motor outperform the restrictive stock tbi heads.. so i got a pair of freshly worked heads (081 casting #) for next to nothing.. so im gonna put those on along with ditching the exhaust manifold for a set of hooker shorties, and i also got an edelbrock performer tbi manifold.. should open it up and help it breathe

 

081 are probably better than the 187s

 

Never looked, no. I monitored the old skool way; reading plugs.

 

Modern gasoline makes reading plugs accurately, exceedingly difficult.

 

Can just tune it with the reliable butt dyno 😝

 

^That seems to be the popular method, around these parts.

Yeah? Huh. News to me. I'd probably re-frame that as something more like, "Lack of experience reading plugs nowdays (due to wide spread use of WBO2's) makes reading plugs accurately, exceedingly difficult...for some people." Right? That makes sense to me. But when you've been reading plugs for 35+ years nearly on a daily basis for work (& play)...it doesn't seem "exceedingly difficult". Maybe its like my perspective on driving 2wd muscle cars in snow; that ain't "exceedingly difficult", either.

I guess that we've gone off track here. I suggested that the OP "Feed it what it wants"...which is a pretty universally successful way to get what you/people want from an engine. Now we're bickering about YOUR opinions on MY methods of A/F ratio analysis from something I did some 25 years ago? ....That turned out great? Good stuff.

I wouldn't spend money on injectors that are known to be robust unless there were some related symptom (I saw nothing posted supporting or even suggesting that) and I could PROVE that there was something faulty with the current ones. I WOULD mod the regulator b/c it's totally free, easy to do, and if the engine don't need it today, it very likely will later some day/mods. She -the OP, can ascertain her A/F ratio however she desires....I'd recommend using a WBO2 for that.

 

If it is at 13-14 psi, if you have one that had low pressure stock, it definitely will wake up. My bone stock RS I had was so lean at WOT it would drop to low double digits on the narrowband. Swapped it to the EBL and after the first revision to the base tune it had the injectors static. It had 9.5 psi fuel pressure with the stock regulator and spring. Bumped it to 14 psi, actually installed 350 injectors as well because it was about to get some airflow mods, went back to the EBL Base tune and it ran MUCH, MUCH better.