Purchase last year of a Flavia 2000 coupe (1970) necessitated learning about the car's Kugelfischer injection system. This system was first used on some 1.8 liter motors (about 3500 cars), and then revised for the 2 liter motors (only about 750 cars). It was only used in the 2L for the first two years of production - 1970-71 approx. For the later 2000 coupe, Bosch injection was used.
The Kugelfisher (lets call it KF here) system is quite interesting. When it was working well, it was great - smooth, good power, no fumes, and quite fine. It was working pretty well through last summer, but in the cold, the car ran very poorly, bad starting and running. Really ill. Some of this was thermostat related on the pump, but it seemed there were larger issues to be addressed from years of neglect. So the decision was made to dive in.
The KF pump is practically another motor, with its own small crankshaft, four small pistons pushing out fuel, and several interlocking and related systems to control the pump - for richness, amount of throttle, cold temp, etc. Unravelling all these, and getting them set up right, is quite a task.
Several people have helped along the way, allowing us to unravel many of its mysteries:
- Andrew Cliff of Omicron helped distinguish differences between the 1.8 and 2 liter pumps, part by part.
- Florent Bidet got us in touch with Deleplace, a French supplier of Peugeot KF rebuild kits
- Bert Ewalds came through not only with templates for gaskets (!), but also a French magazine with 500+ photos, step by step rebuilding of the pumps. He also gave great advise on how to proceed. All great information, thanks to everyone.
- Colin Clamp of Flavia Consortium had all the manuals.
- Mike Kristick in the US had the all-important jig for setting the key control rod distance, and another manual on the injection.
All in all, we were well situated. Fettling through the winter didn't seem to get it right; but then we got lucky: Kristick had a used 2L pump from another car (engineer in Massachusetts had taken it off for a carb setup some 10-20 yrs ago), and that was a really great help. While the Lancia documentation is very clear on the 1.8 liter pump and then the change to the 2 liter pump, oddly my car had an undocumented in-between pump, with a slightly different number, and one or two small differences. While most likely the same as the 2L pump, the decision was made to rebuild the 2L pump on the bench, and then swap them out.
Giovanni is the master mechanic for the Lancias here in Chicago. From Sicily originally, he just has lots of experience and not everyone has a hub puller for a Traction-Avant in their shop! It took some time for him to find the quiet space to work on this - but he has made good progress in the past two weeks. So far the pump is apart, he cleaned it all, replaced the seals and gaskets in its innards, opened up all passages (some were pretty plugged up), and is putting it back together again. Its looking great. Lots of crud in housings, so getting all that out assures (we hope) good running. He considers the KF pump to be similar to the SPICA used on many US Alfas, even if its similar and yet different from other KF pumps used in Peugeots and BMWs of that period. Owner's role is to sort out the data, find parts, assist in any way - and as we are in need of one rubber cup/seal, unavailable, I'll draw up and have 3D printed. Its not a critical part, so easy enough. We got new intake hoses (similar to Fiat X1/9), have to cut some gaskets, replaced the injectors with the spare ones from the 2L setup, and we're in pretty good shape. Almost there!
Info on these pumps is rather scattered, but it is possible to assemble the proper collection of info/parts. But its been a bit of "from here and there", what do those less familiar with these oddities do? Hopefully this can help someone else down the road.
