Usual carb diagnostic methods. Set up by reading chicken entrails, they'll only have had beef ones in Texas

Andy

I was unsure about this question. Clincher for me was finding a motorcycle tour company in ethiopia who has just converted their ktms from efi to carb. I bought a klr for my 2016 cape to cairo ("when in Rome, do as the Romans do").


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Someone's laughing at me. My daughter has just asked for help with her homework.......which is on electrical circuits!


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Kids homework is tough when you've had it easy for years. Tried long division by hand?

The most common vehicles on the planet are EFI. Diesel taxis and trucks but also scooters and small bikes. EFI costs to develop and design but can then be installed by robots ( or their human equivalents) . OBD is out there and the readers will do multiple vehicles. Don't imagine that the so called third world is still running Amals. The fiddling and faffing that comes with carbs may make getting a clueless bullet wallah to twiddle screws in the side of your multi banked bings easier than getting a taxi mechanic to believe his Jaltester will talk to a bike, but neither is a great way to spend a day.

I'd price up readers if going on a long trip. Messages like "open circuit at pin 15" don't really need twenty years of breathing exhaust fumes with your ear to the air box, screwdriver in the mixture screw and your lucky underpants on your head to diagnose.

Andy

Feeling nervous now!

If only it was just long division by hand that i needed. A maths teacher for a mother and a career spent working with actuaries means i feel pretty relaxed about maths (at least until multiple greek letters and abstract concepts arrive). My engineering skills on the other hand reflects the utter DIY ineptitude of my (otherwise great) father :-)


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Probably the best being written on carb versus EFI.

I don't like the idea to take apart a carb in the middle of nowhere, in dust and rain and try then to figure out how all those tiny parts get together again. Yes, it's a matter of experience. But how many EFI have died, compared to defective carbs?

Adv Bike Selection 2 | Sibirsky Extreme

Its a simply choice for me and there are 100's of pages on this topic on the internet.


But to compare a simple mechanical carb to a FI bike saying the injector is a lot less complex is not true as its all the other parts that run the injector you have to include which carb bikes do not have which makes them really simple and ideal over a FI bike when fault finding and fixing

I have never had to push a carb bike but I have had to push a FI bike a few times....... then try fault finding the fuelling/cutting out issue and replacing parts you think it "could" be as there are lots of reasons why a FI will cut out and rarely its the injector itself


On a carb bike its pretty simple to fault find a fuelling/cutting out issue as usually you start and finish with the carb when looking

I hired a bmw 650 dakar for one week to ride in South Africa (brothers stag do!). It developed a fuelling issue on day 3 - limped to the nearest town. Wasted a day while BMW 'fixed' it.

Set out next day across the Karoo - problem re-emerged. Sat in cafe for a further day in the desert whilst mobile BMW mechanic tried fix 2.

Road bike across Karoo in 39 deg C, still with fuelling issue. praying it wouldn't die and leave me stranded

Made next town, gave up and rental co rode a replacement 1200gs to me overnight.

Add me to the list of EFI failures :-)


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I once picked up a women in a pub in Barnsley on a Tuesday night and after one we went back to......

Sorry, family site, I won't use than analogy

Do you think possibly the bike everyone had nailed day after day without giving a hoot might have been past its best?

Andy

Despite living quite close, I've never been to Barnsley. Are the ladies there like the ones from Pontefract?

While owning both carbed and EFI bikes (At one point I owned 6 carbys and 1 EFI), I've had the need to fixed 2 non functioning carbs and 1 non functioning EFI. I managed to fix one of the carbs myself and on the other I had to get someone else to look at it.

On the EFI bike, I broke down in front of a Renault car garage in rural France. After I had removed the unit, the car wrench was able to diagnose the problem immediately (high pressure hose had a slight split, so that there was fuel coming out of the injector, but just not under enough pressure) and within 1/2 hour I was on my way again. The difference between my bike and the cars he usually works on, is that my bike has 1 cylinder and 1 injector and the cars a multiple of that.

What this little tale contributes to the discussion, I have no idea.

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TBS.com

My 500 cc Enfield does around 95MPG touring fully loaded. It has a carb which had never been touched from new in 2005. So I have no idea how long it might take to fix should it fail. Seems reasonably economical to me.
When I had the BMW it had two bings. I set them up with some small service parts and again never touched them for about 4 years when I sold the bike. Never any issues. Likewise on old amals on Triumph twins from early 60's to late 70's and on my Tiger cub back in the early sixties. Only time I needed to touch any of them in over 100,000 miles was when the cub needed a new needle for its zenith carb.

With the thunderbird with three carbs.... so far so good Did need to change a rubber bit recently (rear tyre split).

What I have found over the years is it is a good thing to monitor your mpg regularly. It is nearly always the first measurable indication of something going off test.

I have a very similar story about a rented BMW F650 that left me stranded in the middle of a 10-day rental. However, it was a carbed bike.

I tore the carb down, and cleaned it. Screwed up again the next day, and the day after that. Finally had to take it back to the rental place ijn the back of a pickup truck.

Having rode several bikes with both carbs and FI, I'm not sure you can really point at one or the other as being better for a RTW trip: they both have advantages and disadvantages.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

I used both FI and Carb during my RTW and I never broke down with a FI , the carb are fairly easy to fix and even if you do lose a bit of power at high altitude this should not be a big deal with a bike bigger than 300CC . Bad fuel and side road repairs on FI can be rough but even in Africa the quality of the fuel is getting better and better. The chance is your suspension will let you down before anything else

Carburetor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the carberator has been around since 1876 and has been used on every kind of gas/petrol engine since in one form of another (other than deisel and steam)...So it seems reasonable that no matter where you are in the world, someone if they operate a gas engine either knows or knows someone that can fix it....

As for performance, I wouldn't worry about doing an indianapolis 500 on some of the stuff 'out there'...for me I'd be concerned about proven-time tested-fixability-just-in-case.

IMHO

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kicka,kicka,cough, sputter, kicka,kicka, cough, sputter, bwbwbwbwbw....she running fiine today

Great points on both sides of this issue.
One interesting development that's fairly new ... and that could affect dual sport and ADV single cylinder bikes in the future ... is the use of EFI on modern motocross bikes.

Has anyone here seen a modern moto crosser stripped down? Anyone checked out how the EFI works?

The clever packaging and compactness of components and relative simplicity give hope that this sort of system could be adapted to a road legal dual sport single in the future.

It's taken the Big Four about 10 years to work the bugs out of Moto Cross EFI systems. Interesting that KTM were the LAST of the big players to go from a Carb to EFI on their race bikes.

Yamaha, Suzuki and Honda were out front on this and LOST many races early on due to EFI gremlins sidelining their bikes. Lots of documentation on early problems.

But in the last 4 or 5 years EFI "troubles" seem to be resolved ... although KTM's Super Cross/Moto Cross star Ryan Dungey was recently sidelined by what was probably an EFI problem.

By most accounts Moto Cross EFI systems are now bullet proof. This sort of usage is probably the very best testing regime you could have for an electronic fuel system. If it can survive Motocross, chances are good it will be good in the middle of Mongolia going under water with Colebatch and friends.

Not heard much on technical side of EFI R&D for MX bikes, but having recently seen a modern YZ450 up close and naked, I was stunned how tiny, lightweight and compact the entire system was. The mechanic explained where key components were located and what would need changing if you had a failure and what that might involve.

Pretty simple really. Un Plug, Plug in new bit. Small box to test components. He said he's NEVER seen ANY failure of any components yet.

Will any of this new technology filter down to street legal dual sport bikes like the KLR650, KLR Super Sherpa, XT250's, XR650L Hondas, DR650's, DRZ400S ??

It's clear that any "new" generation Dual sports still produced with carbs will have to up grade to EFI ... which way will they go? Big, heavy, expensive and overly complex systems as produced by BMW? Or something as elegant and simple as the system Yamaha are now using .... and evolving every season?