Hilborn Fuel Injection Tech info. It works!!

[Brent Jarvis]

Some of you have been asking questions about Hilborn Fuel Injection and have brought up my name and Car. Brent Jarvis from Performance Restorations and the Candy Orange 66 Corvette with Hillborn Fuel injection featured in the Febuary 06 issue of Hotrod magazine.
Here's your anser. It works!! If you give it a chance and follow the instructions to the letter you'll have a kickass ride. The main things to be carefull of are: #1 Wireing, it's really critical to do what they say and also to isolate the MSD or similer ignition control. You need to make sure the computor wireing is isolated also. The grounds are a huge deal. Do as they say!
Camshaft: You can run a big ass cam but it has to be on no less than a 112 degree lobe separation. 113-114 works better. My cam in my 555ci bb chevy has 765 lift intake and exhaust with 112.5 lobe separation. Next thing to focus on is synchronizing the throttle blades. This is real important! Buy and install a wideband o2 guage and learn how to use it to read your fuel mixture! Mount it so you can see it when your driving around. You'll need this tool to really dial in the part throttle and "tip in".
Call Andy in tech at Hilborn and he can forward any info related to these issues. He's the man and knows how to make this set up work!
Finnaly get your ass to a good chassis dyno shop that can get air-fuel readings for you. Plan on spending some time with it. I spent a whole day there and made 12 pulls. Hwy it feels kind of abusive, but if you built a good car it's no sweat.The first thing to do is to get a "flat" fuel curve. Then you can play with it, leaning it or fattening it. When your done with fuel then dial in the timing. It is only after you dial in wot that you can mess with the part throttle and tip in curves. There is no way that Hilborn or any company could pretend to know what your engine and car wants. They could only give you something kinda-sorta close to get it running. You absolutely must go to the Dyno with it. And you or some one needs to know what they are doing with it. I did my dyno work myself at Slingshot Motorsports. Actually it's kinda cool sitting in the thing with the engine screaming at 7000rpm, and the mph at 200plus! Beleive it!
A progressive throttle cable cam on the linkage will help drivabilty a bunch. I took one from a GM throttle body and addapted it to the Hilborn linkage. The Fuel injection is Really responsive!!
If you do what I've outlined then your going to be driving one Bad Ass car! Nothing on this planet accelerates from 3000 to 7000rpm like this setup. Hilborn has rueld the road courses and dragstrips for years and there's good reason. BIG power!
Driving around town my car idles smooth at 1100rpm and accelerates and cruises smooth as hell. There is no way you could get 1 or 2 carbs with a cam like this to be this smooth. I ended up with 758 horsepower at 6800 rpm. the torque is huge at 3000rpm and continues past redline. It's a no brainer to drive on the road course. I just leave it in third gear and use fourth on the longer straights. The torque and power carry it past everything on the track.
Feel free to call me at my shop if you need help.
Brent Jarvis
President
Performance Restorations 847-566-7469
Good luck and drive fast!!!!

[camcojb]

Whose EFI controller are you using? Hilborn supplies a Carabine which has not got a single thumbs up from any tuner who's worked with it, at least not as far as I've read about. On mine I used a FAST which worked great, but that was several years ago. There are even better controllers now.



Jody

[Brent Jarvis]

I used the Caribine unit that was supllied with the kit. At first I thought it sucked untill I figured it out. It doesn't get much more simple really. I like the KISS theory. "Keep it Simple Stupid". I know there are a lot more high tech controlers with infinite adjustabilty. And I've used some of them here in the shop on customers cars. But with this if you pay attention to what the guys at Hilborn tell you to do and know how to tune and dyno a car, or have a good dyno shop that will help you the thing will run smooth and fast. Since the thing was dialed in I have not touched the controler. Allthough if need be it's a simple task that anyone who can turn a carburator skrew can do. I just drive it and race it and have fun.
Good luck with your car.

[camcojb]

Thanks Brent. It's nice to see someone that had good luck with the unit. Getting the proper tune is everything with any efi system, but I had not heard any positive reports with that unit. Thanks for the info.

Jody

[BBPanel]

This is an old post but I thought it might be appropriate to reply rather than start a new thread. I too have been wondering about the Carabine system and have also not heard many good things about it. I have a Hilborn stack manifold for a BB to convert to EFI for my 55 Belair. I just returned from Hot August Nights and I met a guy with a red Stingray running a converted Crower stack unit. He said he tried for 2 years to get it tuned right (don't know which ECU he tried) but he said he switched to the Carabine and it worked great.

Brent - do you still have the 66 running the Carabine - would be interesting to hear how it has performed now some 3-4 years later. Thanks. -Bob

[compos mentis]

Subscribed...planning to run a stack system that pokes itself through the hood on a '55 Shivy.

[derekf]

FYI, the original poster hasn't logged on in almost a year. Hopefully he's subscribed and will see the traffic, but best bet might be to call him at his shop (he provided the number).

[compos mentis]

Here's that Vette on their website.

http://www.performancerestorations.com/Jarvisfamilycars/66corvette.html

[oestek]

Here's a video on the car, you can hear it running...

http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/67/97/