Randy's Recipe For FSJ 360 Performance

Contributed By: Randy Stephens

Randy's Recipe For FSJ 360 Performance

1...........Holley Pro-Jection TBI system .......$800.00

1...1975 AMC 4 bbl Manifold off friends 401......$NA

1........... Mallory Comp 140 Fuel Pump........$150.00

1...Jacob's Omni Pack Magnum (no wires)..$300.00

I took the above ingredients, about 150 hours of my time, and concocted a Recipe for good performance and milage.

The Installation

The first step in installing the Holley Pro-Jection for me was to replace my 2bbl intake with a 4bbl intake. I looked at the Edelbrock Performer series # 2131K for $200.00 from JEGS. Fortunately for me though a friend with a retired 401 gave me his intake. After crushing the first manifold gasket by trying to do it alone, I installed the intake.

Step two was to follow Holley's instruction manual to install the Pro-Jection. In a perfect world this would have taken a weekend. The 2bbl TBI I chose did not require me to replace the stock 1/4" return fuel line with a 5/16. I am not sure when AMC started returning fuel to the tank from the factory, but it made my life easier.

The actual TBI which looks like a Carburetor with no float bowls was the simplest to install. It basically bolted onto the 4bbl manifold. I did need to make a gasket for the manifold as I could not find one at a local parts store to purchase. With The EGR valve where AMC placed it, and the new location (front to back) of the throttle, I made a new accelerator cable mounting bracket.

The "brain" must be mounted in a location easily accessible, as you need to adjust from time to time. I chose to attach mine to the underside of the AC unit at the bottom of the dash. The "umbilical" cord was passed through the fire wall just above the transmission hump. This works well. but if someone wanted to sacrifice their Glove box, it may make a more slick installation to place it in there. Then you could just open the glove box door and see the CPU for the adjusting process.

The Fuel Pump was also easy to install. The only place to install it is just forward of the Fuel tank on the inside of the driver side frame rail. All is great, except Holley fails to print that their fuel pump (supplied with the kit) must be located within 30 inches of the pickup. My tank is close to 50 " long and it just so happens the pickup is close to 41" from the fare side of the tank. After 3 weeks of fighting this "bug" I installed a friends Mallory comp series 140 and off it ran. I bought him another one for fear of removing it off of WAGABOO.

Ignition

After I got the Pro-jection worked out I drove WAGABOO for about 1000 miles which included taking the family(5) into the mountains of Virginia for a weekend of skiing. This was when I recorded my fuel milage of about 14.5 MPG over the 4 day trip. Now that I was comfortable, I decided to get an updated ignition. Jacob's was the direction I was leaning because of a system I had 5 years ago.

I did not know it but Jacob's has a wonderful police of allowing you to trade Up. I traded in an old Milage Master Plus for The Omni Pack Magnum. When I mentioned to the I had A Pro-Jection, the salesman said he would make an adjustment and add the "Factory Coil Trigger Mechanism". What that does is uses the stock coil to trigger the Omni Pac. That plus the power leads, and I was set in 35 minuets. Upon the initial start up, I found a much smoother idle, and on my road test, excellent throttle response and no lag areas. What A Difference! A word of caution, this trigger thing makes the original coil stick up about 3 inches above original. The hood will crush it! I remove one of the factory coil screws and tilted it about 45 degrees. Randy Stephens
Sat, 1 Mar 1997 19:47:25 -0500