Carburetor VS. Fuel Injection

What do you like most? Do you prefer to have a carburetor type scooter or the fuel injected type scooter. Lets talk about their difference, performance and benefits.

I will make a review about these types of engine and tell you what will make you choose each type. These types varies in their operations, fuel consumption and maintenance.

CARBURETOR

Carburetor is the primary system which allows the air and fuel mixture to be mix properly before entering the engine chamber. They are used in large industry of automotive engines but now is being replaced by fuel injections.

I find it interesting how or why people starts to like the fuel injection type of engines rather than the old carburetor type. I start looking for some answers with my question and find some comments and suggestions. Just like asking them, why is fuel injection better than carburetor. These are some of the answers I see.

"There is no choke"

"It has more efficient fuel consumption"

"It has more horsepower"

These are some of the answers I see. But before we get into that lets take a look about the history on how carburetor become the king of the moto-landscape.

When motorcycles started, carburetors were the only way to mix fuel and air in the right proportions for an engine to digest them. These starts the production and usage of carburetor in automotive industry. They didn’t seem to be broken, so nobody put much effort into fixing them. Up until the early years of this century, carbs just worked better.

Carbs also worked well with the crappy electrical systems most motorcycles had. Carburetors seemed to be fine and good, until someone realized trees are people, too. Or something like that. It turns out that running internal combustion engines is pretty hard on the planet.

Carburetors start to fade away in the industry in some reasons. What are the other things you don't know about carburetors?

1. They give more pollution that fuel injection. How it is possible? When the scooter isn't running the carburetor stocks fuel in a bowl like storage when these fuel evaporates it gives pollution to the nature, while in fuel injection they are sealed enough that prevent unburned fuel to evaporate.
2. Carbs are imprecise when it comes in mixing air and fuel. Unlike fuel injection that can be adjusted to make a precise ratio of air and fuel mixture.

But the good thing about the carburetors is their maintenance. With only a few budget, tuning with a handful of jets can be done. They are infinitely rebuildable and user-serviceable than fuel injections. So if you are travelling to remote places everyday, carburetors can have slight edge.

FUEL INJECTION

While the automotive industry began to grow, fuel injection starts to replace carburetors and now is well known in different countries. The benefits of fuel injection varies depending on its adjustment. Others say that fuel injection is much better in terms of fuel and power.

There are some competing objectives such as:

• Power output
• Emission performance
• Reliability
• Initial Cost
• Fuel efficiency
• Accommodation of alternative fuels
• Maintenance 
• Engine tuning
• Smooth operation
• Environment friendly

Mostly of the new vehicles being launch today are already equipped with fuel injection. Fuel injection also dispenses with the need for a separate mechanical choke which on carburetor-equipped vehicles must be adjusted as the engine warms up to normal temperature. That is one of the most good benefits of fuel injection when it comes in starting the engine. Furthermore, on spark ignition engines fuel injection has the advantage of being able to facilitate stratified combustion which have not been possible with carburetors.

It is only with the advent of multi-point fuel injection certain engine configurations, as traditional carburetor arrangement with single or twin carburetors could not provide even fuel distribution between cylinders, unless a more complicated individual carburetor per cylinder is used. That is why you really need a good mechanic that can adjust your carburetor in its precise ratio.

Fuel injection systems are also able to operate normally regardless of orientation, whereas carburetors with floats are not able to operate upside down or in zero gravity.

Fuel injection generally increases engine fuel efficiency that helps you to save more than other rypes of engine. With the improved cylinder-to-cylinder fuel distribution of multi-point fuel injection, less fuel is needed for the same power output.

Exhaust emissions are cleaner because the more precise and accurate fuel metering reduces the concentration of toxic combustion byproducts leaving the engine. With the help of  catalytic converter that can be optimized to operate more efficiently, exhaust gas is more cleaner.