205 MI16 carb un-conversion

[miniman]

Looking at a 205 with MI16 conversion that's on carbs. Wondering what the approach would be to removing the carbs and reverting to the original injection system (which doesn't come with the car). I believe I'd need inlet manifold, ECU, but not sure what else. Has anyone done this or know any good resources?

[Steve H]

The MI would have been running on Motronic originally I think which combines injection and ignition in one ecu. It’s now probably on a conversion that runs a normal electronic distributor like the 8v Gti in which case you may well be missing a load of wiring loom as well as the ecu, manifold, fuel pump, injectors, sensors etc. Unless you have a handy donor car it could be a bit of a task to get back to stock system.

Of course you could get lucky and find the spark is still being run by the Motronic and that most of the system is still there………

Unless you are desperate for originality, which would be odd as it’s had an engine conversion, I would consider injected throttle bodies with a standalone ecu controlling spark and fuel but that option won’t be cheap either so it probably depends on what you are aiming to achieve.

[miniman]

Thanks, a bit of me worries that carbs will be a pain to keep running well and I really want to be driving it not fixing it, but I guess they are really no more likely to be problematic than an ancient fuel injection system.

Longer term if I keep it beyond a year, throttle bodies is probably the way I’ll go but if I am going to drop a few £k on something it’s more likely to be a better ignition system for my Chimaera.

[Steve H]

They shouldn’t be too much effort once they are set about right, pretty much all the adjustments are for idle quality and the rest is jetting so once it’s right, it’s right.

And they do sound good