New to modern cars
 

Hey ya'll. Born and raised in North Hollywood, now I live in Phoenix. I am a traveling man, I go from LA to Phx regularly to speak on various issues. I have too much time on my hands so I was looking for a hobby.

A family member just gave me a 97 eclipse gst as my tinker toy/daily driver. I have never owned anything newer than a 69 Ghia. Even though I have worked on countless aircooled VWs, I am lost when it come to this thing. It looks good though.

So, who wants to explain fuel injection, catalitic converters and emissions to me?
Dr.J

RE: New to modern cars
 

Welcome!...just post ?s in the right forums and I swear you will never believe how many dsm genius's are on here!...There great with helping you out on just about anything!..

RE: New to modern cars
 

welcome.

The basics
CATs rob your power to make it cleaner emissions are a pain in the balls and fuel injection it electronically controlled fuel distripbution (based on amount of air the MAS picks up the computer reads and compensates proper fuel)

I guess that is the cheap and easy way to put it

RE: New to modern cars
 

A catalytic converter is basically part of your exhaust piping system that filters out toxins in your exhuast to have a cleaner output. In the process its creating a little restriction on the flow so you do loose some power as emonz said. However alot of states require a Cat for emmisions (toxin outflow) control. And emonz said the basic idea behind fuel injection. But to totally understand it you really have to understand the function of a cylinder head as well. Basically air comes in through intake and gets metered so the engine knows how much air there is. Then for each cylinder there is a fuel injector (basically like a small spray gun i guess is the best way to explain it) that sprays fuel into each chamber in the motor. The amount that it sprays is as emonz said, based on the amount of metered air coming in. One of the coolest 3d visuals ive seen is here. This might help a bit.
http://feerc.ornl.gov/video/index.shtml

and of course it is the Computer (ECU) that controls all of these functions.

RE: New to modern cars
 

Cool, well I have plenty of stuff to think about. I'll start by figuring out what new intake, and exhaust to get to make it all legal. I changed the ignition, etc to MSD and noticed little difference.... my VW experience probably won't do much to help me with this car... Thanks for the help. Dr.J