Message text written by "Hugh Barber"
>Randall Young wrote;
....the tailpipe emissions were pretty bad and apparently no one at Lucas
or
Triumph could figure out how to clean them up.
Randall,
I had always heard that the camshaft and compression ratio were the primary
reasons that the TR5 was "dirty" and that North American customers didn't
get PI because the dealers disn't want to spend the money to train their
mechanics (who already knew how to tune Strombergs). I wonder what the
"true" story was?
<
Just to add a little more confusion, I remember reading that once the
emissons were brought into line the performance was not sufficiently better
than the carb model to warrent the added complexity. BL didn't clean up
the PI version mostly because they didn't have to. They had the carb
version that was selling well enough as is and that means they didn't have
to push the PI system through the EPA process.
As far as the German PI systems, these were quite different in
configuration. The Lucas was a purely mechanical system and worked on
throttle position and engine speed. The "L-Jetronic" system (the L
standing for luft which is German for air) worked off of air flow.
Further, the TR7's and 8's were "FI" no "PI." I know this is semantics
since petrol is fuel and, at least in some areas, fuel is petrol, but the
only resemblence between the two systems is the absence of carburettors.
The System used on the wedges is basically the Bosch electronic version of
the L-Jetronic system used on a large number of European cars of that era.
Dave
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