To carb or not to carb

Sterling · 03-09-2008, 05:12 PM

Primarily it's cost.
The cost of a decent carb setup is going to be far less than an EFI setup that yields the same power and range. The best of the best carb, built perfectly to spec for that engine, is going to be outdone by a tiny margin by a FI system costing 5 times as much.
Secondly, only arguably, is that few people actually will take the time to read up on how carbs work in an effort to understand how to tune it. Tuning carbs takes experience, which means lots of time for trial & error & frustration. No doubt about it.
And then there is a kind of mythology surrounding carbs; They're "old", "outdated", "finicky", "behave erratically with any environmental changes", ..."need weekly retunes"

...
And, my personal pet peeve; this huge pool of misinformation regarding carburetor size, and what's appropriate for a particular engine. People fail to do the simple math necessary to demonstrate that some choices of carburetors are downright ridiculous, no matter what performance gain has been claimed.
Hand in hand with this, full circle back to the beginning, is that people just don't know how carbs work. With just a basic understanding of how carbs function, other myths get "busted", and carbs start to not look like the terrible alternative to EFI afterall.

I aim to do just that here in this section. But there's no denying that if you have the money to spend, a really good EFI system will be king on the street.
The track is a different story, as the window of used RPM is narrowed, and a properly sized carb can certainly be tuned to deliver the optimum mixture throughout that range. An expensive EFI system is not a guaranteed win over a properly done carb on the track. However, a big percentage of the time that a carb beats an EFI in a race, drivers being equal, you have to often chock it up to the EFI being "not the best" combined with the carb "having a really good day". Then there are those who just really know their stuff. Guys like Paul Yaw.

03-09-2008, 05:12 PM	#1
Sterling Premium Vendor Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 74 Rep Power: 18	Primarily it's cost. The cost of a decent carb setup is going to be far less than an EFI setup that yields the same power and range. The best of the best carb, built perfectly to spec for that engine, is going to be outdone by a tiny margin by a FI system costing 5 times as much. Secondly, only arguably, is that few people actually will take the time to read up on how carbs work in an effort to understand how to tune it. Tuning carbs takes experience, which means lots of time for trial & error & frustration. No doubt about it. And then there is a kind of mythology surrounding carbs; They're "old", "outdated", "finicky", "behave erratically with any environmental changes", ..."need weekly retunes" ... And, my personal pet peeve; this huge pool of misinformation regarding carburetor size, and what's appropriate for a particular engine. People fail to do the simple math necessary to demonstrate that some choices of carburetors are downright ridiculous, no matter what performance gain has been claimed. Hand in hand with this, full circle back to the beginning, is that people just don't know how carbs work. With just a basic understanding of how carbs function, other myths get "busted", and carbs start to not look like the terrible alternative to EFI afterall. I aim to do just that here in this section. But there's no denying that if you have the money to spend, a really good EFI system will be king on the street. The track is a different story, as the window of used RPM is narrowed, and a properly sized carb can certainly be tuned to deliver the optimum mixture throughout that range. An expensive EFI system is not a guaranteed win over a properly done carb on the track. However, a big percentage of the time that a carb beats an EFI in a race, drivers being equal, you have to often chock it up to the EFI being "not the best" combined with the carb "having a really good day". Then there are those who just really know their stuff. Guys like Paul Yaw.