Should carbs be a show-stopper for my 914 search?, How bad are they really? Options

[BigDBass]

In my apparently endless search for the right 914, I've come upon decent candidates which I then discover have been carburated. I've basically treated that as "nothing to see here, move along", but.... what if one finds what is otherwise almost the ideal match in condition, price, color, original parts, location, except for lacking stock fuel injection?

References usually say just that it's an expensive proposition to convert back to if you manage to acquire the necessary parts. How difficult and expensive is this? What all is involved?

[Jeff Nelson]

Be very wary if the car is equiped with a single carb set-up. These are the pits; hard to start, uneven response. A good running FI set-up is wonderful. I never cease to be amazed at how well my stock D-jet starts and runs.

When I bought my car it had a single, progressive carb. It was otherwise clean, the seller was informed and did the maintanance and it came with a box of all the FI bits needed to convert it back. (The car came to the seller with dual Webers, he didn't convert it to carbs but he did install the single carb set-up so his buddy could have the Webers.) The bad news was the cam. It was strongly suspected that the engine was rebuilt and cammed for the dual carbs. Too bad it didn't come with duals, I might be running them now.

I later bought a rough, but complete, running parts car with injection, swapped the motor and never looked back. It's not until I rebuilt my motor and installed a slightly hotter cam (Web 73) that I felt the need to change things for tunability and opted for Megasquirt.

For someone just getting into a 914 and not looking forward to a lot of work (which you will do eventually anyway) try to get something that is already sorted out. But finding a car with as little rust as possible is the important thing (unless you like to weld).