"resurrecting" a Scorpion for 24 Hours of LeMons

[nicebloke]

Team member here, begging the Lancisti community to please put us out of our WEBER-INDUCED MISERY! When this car runs, it is a delight to race, but all that is meaningless when you spend hours off track trying to troubleshoot ignition and fueling issues, like we did this weekend.

We really want to continue racing this car, but not without fuel injection. So, we're looking for the FI setup to put on, or even better, a 2.0 with FI. Surely someone here has something lying around? I know we could drop $1000 on a brand new kit from Midwest Bayless, but there's a reason we're racing in Lemons and it is because we have found the bottom of our pockets.

Stay tuned for a race update from our fearless leader. It will make for some, ahem, fiery reading...

[LanciaDave]

Fitting the FI system can be complex, leading to a lot of parts that will be harder to diagnose at the track. It also limits your ability to upgrade cams. Webers are the performance carb of choice for hotrods and sports cars. Maybe just look for a better weber carb. A 34DATR/DMTR is better than the 32. Have you tried fitting slightly larger jets in the carb you have? Getting a stock parts carb and combining the good pieces? Ducting cool air to the intake? Fitting a header? Another option is a 40DCNF if you can find one used somewhere. Should give much better fueling than stock carb, which was restricted for emission purposes.

Dave

[nicebloke]

Thanks Dave - we actually already moved to the 34 DATR, because it resolved fuel starvation issues in long fast right handers. We also know we have the right jets in the new carb because we took it to the dyno and got it running nicely. But after the small engine fire at the last race, we just couldn't get the car to run correctly, even after giving the whole carb three full cleans. All jets were clear and seemed like the body of the carb was also good. It made us wonder if there was something else going on following the fire. So we checked timing (was fine), spark, compression and all were okay. No vacuum leaks from what we could tell (spraying brake cleaner around the carb and listening for surging).

We tried putting the old 32 DATR back on, but that was just flooding and the test was useless.

When you're dropping $2000 for a race weekend, you just want the thing to run. Outright performance becomes less of a concern if you can't even get on track.

For what it's worth, we've tested the waters to see if any other Lemons competitors are interested in buying the car. Our Lancia experiment may soon be over...

[fiatrn]

nicebloke
Oh no!
I don't think the stock Fiat 124 Spider fuel injection manifold fits a Scorpion, but there were a lot more FI spiders than Lancias, so you might be able to find and adapt a Fiat 124 setup. And finding either a rusty 1980+ Fiat out to be easier than an injected Beta. Maybe try asking around Mirafiori.com and Fiatspider.com for a donor vehicle near you. There's also a good chance that someone has all the parts in a box and will sell the to you cheap. Bigger audience, better chances...
Jonathan

[tfradke]

nicebloke
Oh no!
I don't think the stock Fiat 124 Spider fuel injection manifold fits a Scorpion, but there were a lot more FI spiders than Lancias, so you might be able to find and adapt a Fiat 124 setup. And finding either a rusty 1980+ Fiat out to be easier than an injected Beta. Maybe try asking around Mirafiori.com and Fiatspider.com for a donor vehicle near you. There's also a good chance that someone has all the parts in a box and will sell the to you cheap. Bigger audience, better chances...
Jonathan

I have both Fiat and Lancia fuel injection parts at my shop in Chico. Happy to let them go. You can also see the Lancia fuel injection conversion on my 1976 Scorpion.

[LanciaDave]

If you had a fire, you likely damaged some hoses or wiring you did not notice right away leading to poor running. Try tracing it all down. This would likely be a better start before bolting numerous FI hoses and wiring and hoping that cures the problem. Also keep you from burying the problem if you do elect to change to FI

[zanzabar88]

I have both Fiat and Lancia fuel injection parts at my shop in Chico. Happy to let them go. You can also see the Lancia fuel injection conversion on my 1976 Scorpion.

Sounds awesome! Could you show me how to put together and install a complete kit?

[zanzabar88]

As for the story on what happened in our last race, well, all seemed well for about the first 6 hours of racing. Then on track our 3rd driver noticed a power loss, smoke in the rear view mirror, then FIRE in the rear view! Appears that the foam air filter on top of the carburetor caught fire, melted, ingested into the carburetor and melted venturis (!!!). The fire spread over to the distributor cap and melted that, along with some nearby wiring. We attempted to clean and rebuild the carburetor, several times, over the next day but never got on track. We had it running a couple times, seemingly pretty well too, until (we assume) the carburetor got plugged again with whatever molten metal/plastic was floating around in there.

[DJ]

Sounds awesome! Could you show me how to put together and install a complete kit?

It's really pretty simple if you use the Beta manifold and throttle body. You can also find a "big-throat" 60mm throttle body that will give you better flow.

I also ended up doing a programmable Megasquirt system on it which turned out to be really nice.

The hardest parts are modifying the vertical shifter rod with an offset to clear the Beta manifold and figuring out a proper accelerator cable assembly. Here's a couple pics of the mod that needs to be done to the shifter rod.

[zanzabar88]

I'm trying to decide why this thing caught fire. Leaning towards something wrong in ignition system. Spark from dizzy gets to carburetor and lights up the fuel/oil soaked filter?

How do I prevent this in the future? Should I just replace all the ignition parts (coil, dizzy, plugs, wires)? I do have a Pertronix kit and Flame Thrower coil ready to go.

But still, why did this happen?