[Ofnaman1995]

Was just curious if anyone could explain the Pros and Cons of having a motorcycle that has a Carb as opposed to having one with EFI. I've heard the EFI is better cause you don't have to use a choke or anything to warm up.

 

[bclerk]

Gonna be a long thread, I'll bet. 100 readers, 100 opinions. I owned and ran a fuel injection shop for a few years, and so I've got mine. A properly designed and properly set up closed loop EFI should give the best of everything: economy, performance, driveability. An open loop EFI gives a pretty good chance for the best of everything if you accurately estimate and upload the response settings. A carburetor in my opinion works on the same principal as the "there's no substitute for cubic inches" argument. It uses brute force by pouring in a lot of fuel pretty much all the time. The excess burns off in the exhaust system. On this basis LotsOfFuel + LotsOfAirIn + BigWellTunedExhaustOut = GoLikeH*ll. It usually also means not-so-great mileage and lots of emissions issues. BUT carburetors and manifolds are usually a whole lot cheaper to build than the EFI system, particularly a closed loop setup, so carburetors are still hanging around where cost is a big issue and the EPA is not.

 

[LittleBear]

If the owner can tune carbs correctly they are great because there are fewer and fewer good carb tuners out there every day. If you rely on somewone else to tune it, EFI is the current way to go. Current EFI's systems allow the AFR to be dialed in down to the knat's a$$. This is much more difficult to achive with a carb. Most people throw in a larger main jet and call it good because it runs great at WOT but the rest of the carb circuits are off.
EFI systems will be the only thing availble in a few years just as with cars today primarly because of the EPA and secondaryly because, nobody wants to or knows how to mess with carbs anymore.