Fuel injection is by far a better system for day to day running of vehicles.

It's more efficient, more economical and semi-self adjusting. It's mostly very reliable and the technology is well established. Solid state electronics very rarely go wrong.

BUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this is no small but !! LOL

This only stands true where you are in a modern civilised world where there is a garage every 5 miles, a pocket full of recovery companies, mobile phones, next day delivery on parts etc.


Carbs, gravity fed fuel and natural aspiration are BY FAR simpler, BY FAR easier to diagnose and repair and BY FAR easier to bodge, repair and adjust, and any mechanic in the third world understands how it works.



Fuel injection bikes need fuel pumps and the electronics to run fuel pumps. They have servo controlled motors to let the bike idle. They need lambda sensors in their exhausts, MAF sensors in their airbox.


These are not things that can be bodged. If your fuel pump dies on half way down the silk road then you're going to be pretty much up sh*t creek. You'll be parked up in an overpriced hotel for 7 days while you search endlessly all over the internet on a crappy wifi connection trying to find out why your bike doesn't run and swearing that DHL want £150 to ship a £200 pump out to you which then customs will want 20% import tax on and you'll have to wait another two weeks for it to clear customs. If it's not lost in the post altogether. And unless you really KNOW it's the pump you might have to post out a controller too. It might be the TPS sensor though. Or maybe the idle actuator is dead.

If you carb stops working in the same place, a 14 year old mechanic with a few old tools will be able to find out what's wrong with it. Carbs are VERY VERY reliable if fed clean fuel. Injectors need the same.


In a nut shell. If you ride a simple FI bike like a 660 Tenere then you'll be very unlucky to break down but it will be more complicated to get sorted. A simple carbed gravity fed bike will be easier to fix in far off places but you're not going to get the same power and economy for the same size engine.


However.... In my opinion , all the best travel bikes are carburetorred. Not because it's better, but because that was all that was really around when they were made. The 90's was the golden era for travel bikes. Not just because they were well made, reliable, cheap and trust wrothy but THEY HAVE CHARACTER...

You can fall in love with an old Tenere or Africa twin. You can't fall in love with grey plastic, control units, and computers which pretty much want to ride the bike for you.. Which all the modern bikes really are.

So if you want an Africa Twin , XT600E, XT600 Tenere, Dominator, Transalp, F650 Dakar, KLE650, DR650 or XR650L etc etc, you're going to have a carb.


Wow... That was quite the rant.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

Can and have mate. I love it when my bike's brain turns itself off when I put it to the ground. Particularly in water. But that's me.

BTW the F650 Dakar was FI.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com

Just out of interest are there any stories of bodging up F.I. systems to keep going on a trip out there? Anyone actually had to bypass sensors, lash up a (F.I.) fuel pump, fix a high pressure hose with chewing gum or a spare brake hose or anything like that? If so, how well did you understand F.I. technology beforehand?

Many people have been talking about how the simplicity of carbs are their strength, how it's easy to work out what the problem is, strip them down at the side of the road etc but that presupposes quite a bit of knowledge about how carbs work, the function of the various jets, needles etc and how the symptoms you're suffering from connects to some process inside the carb. I've ground to a halt with carb issues quite a few times over the years and spent many a happy hour cleaning out jets in campsites. If nothing else it passed the time until I eventually worked out it was an ignition problem

Not so with F.I. though. I don't really understand the system well enough to delve into it with any degree of confidence. Sure, I can point out all the bits and draw a diagram of how it all works but deep down knowledge is lacking. I don't know much about how various failure modes manifest themselves so when it stops (only had that happen once - in a car) I'm in the hands of the "professionals". For the most part I'm dependant on the robustness of the engineering and hoping that whatever has gone wrong it's in a bit I do understand.

Many of the bikes that crop up in these hallowed pages have their well known weak points - AT fuel pumps, DRZs - a long list etc and there's often an aftermarket fix for many of them but I don't ever recall reading about anyone dealing with F.I. issues or taking spare parts with them because "the coolant temperature sensor always goes at about 20k". If it does go what happens? Can I short out the wires with a paper clip to bypass it or should I use a resistor from my tent light.

Whenever a new technology is introduced it's quite often over engineered to start with to gain public confidence but then the penny pinching starts. I know F.I. is not exactly new technology but it is in the context of the sort of bikes we're talking about here and I'm not certain the stresses and strains of overlanding will have been considered much by the manufacturers during the design process. On that basis we should perhaps expect to have to deal with more of these problems as time goes on.

Excellent points!
I've had a few issues that were dealt with ... not really bodging up a fix or anything technical ... and I knew very little about EFI beforehand ... just a few internet words of wisdom from bike forums.

One case my Vstrom (running rough, would barely start), I simply "re-set" ECU back to default setting .. this by simply disconnecting the battery. Worked for a while but problem returned. Dealer dealt with it.
Secondary butterfly controls were dirty, draggin ... or some such. (crap air filter on Vstrom)

Another time, broke plastic high pressure fuel hose connector while removing the tank happened at home. BMW riding buddy had it happen on the road. Bike went home in a truck. I simply went to Suzuki dealer, bought a new hose ... fixed!

Also seen fuel pumps replaced on the road (lots of gas everywhere!) BMW riding friend went to dealer, $450 pump, all fixed. Turns out a pump from a Kia or Hyundai would have worked ... $100.

So no, no real experience bodging or using electronic trickery to by pass sensors or "fool' ECU. I've heard of BMW guys who carry a little magic box to access EFI/ECU computer. These boxes can: display and clear fault codes, re-program certain parameters. Very handy! Not sure how far you can go with such a device, but better than nothing I guess?

I think the more important point is that, when "on the road" one is more likely to find a common mechanic who can deal with a carb. EFI? perhaps ... but for sure carbs are well known system.

I think its all a reasonably fair argument here Ted EXCEPT ... and its a BIG EXCEPT ... is the difference in frequency that carbs need maintenance vs how frequently FI needs maintenance. By skipping that critical, game changing, area of the topic, you have effectively bypassed the main debate.

No one is arguing that a carb is not easier to fix when broken - however dont kid yourself that they can always be fixed. I know of a carbed bike riding the trans siberian home because of broken needles not "capable of being fixed by 14 year old mechanics in any town".

The counter argument to the easier to fix advantage of a carb is the fact that you almost never have to fix EFI. See Margus's post where is compared 300,000 trouble free EFI kms all around the globe over half a dozen years, vs 8,000km with carbed bikes. (http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...2-2#post506978) I also have around 200,000 km of EFI global (rough) riding under my belt (at least 60% off road) and also strangely never touched the injectors, never touched the black boxes.

A balanced viewpoint has to look at both sides of the argument. Its not only thats its more fuel efficient. Its not only that its better at high altitudes. The MAIN advantage of EFI is that it just works. Its simpler, its more logical, and its infinitely more reliable.

Granted its harder to fix if something goes wrong. Just like its harder to fix a mobile phone than an abacus. It doesnt justify taking an abacus on your trip - because any 14 year old with woodworking experience can fix it.

I currently have three bikes. Two EFI and one carbed. I am looking at ways to convert the carbed bike to EFI.

The equation for the uninitiated is as follows:

You have one system which needs constant maintenance and is less efficient (which also ultimately means heavier) - but its easier to fix when it needs fixing.
You have another system which almost never needs attention, is more efficient, lighter and far less restrictive, but is harder to fix when something does go wrong.

A perfect analogy is CDI ignition vs points. You can reset your points every day, but you cant fix black box ignition. The question is do you actually ever need to fix CDI or electronic ignition?? Is resetting points every day really necessary?

Who votes for points?

There are another couple of downside of carbs ... for carbs to work, the fuel either needs to be carried higher than the carb or you need the same weakest link part - a fuel pump.

If you carry the fuel higher than the carb you lose two things:
(1) low weight distribution. Most EFI bikes these days have tanks under the seats. Carbed bikes have tanks above the seat and in front of your nuts. Long distance tanks on carbed bikes make them very top heavy.
(2) Water crossing ability. Low carb (and very low carb breather hoses) result in lower fording depths on carbed bikes. Maybe not an issue for many, but for me, and loads of marginal water crossings on every adventure ride, that in itself is a huge deal and a major factor to consider.

I dont expect everyone to agree with me or my arguments, but you cannot ignore the multi hundreds of thousands of km of empirical evidence of myself, Margus, people like Simon and Lisa Thomas, Joe Pichler .... people who have racked up hundreds of thousands of non stop adventure kilometres .... just do not find themselves ever touching the EFI system. Thats the reality. Thats the real world evidence. That has to be taken into account. The theory arguments about EFI vs Carb are all great and its all important for new adventurists to hear ... but whats actually the reality? What actually happens to people in the real world in remote places with EFI bikes?

Nothing. They wake up. They press the red start button. The bike goes. All the scare stories in the world do not actually counter reality (unless the reader is vulnerable to scare stories in the beginning). Its not like no-one has done it before. Its not like taking EFI bikes on remote adventures is a new concept that we have to debate the pros and cons of. Its been happening for 20 years. The results are in. The vast majority of bikes crossing Africa or Eurasia are EFI bikes. It works !

Maybe its just me. I never was a big one for other peoples opinions. Every opinion is subjective. Its all twisted and biased. There is nothing objective about an opinion. But statistics are raw. Beginners coming into this debate and confused by the different opinions would be well advised to focus less on opinions and look at real world data.

What actually happens in the real world? What bikes are doing what trips and what issues did they have. Find (independently) 10 examples of people who have done trips like the one you plan. Look at the results.

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+1

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TBS.com

Mechanical FI is old technology. Goes back to the 1890's but really got going in the 1930's. It's part of why a Messerschmitt howls (plus supercharger) and a Spitfire coughs and splutters at the top a loop as the carb switches floats.

EFI is 1960's technology productionised in the 1980's. Think of all those VW Golfs and Jettas that broke down all over the place. Austin Allegros had carbs!

Andy

You owe me a coffee.

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Tacos Tyring Travels.com