Carbureted motorcycle in Ontario?

I've got a carb'd 750 (2001) and have no issues with starting it. Put it away last year in December, filled it with gas, used fuel stabilizer and trickle charged the battery. Come April 10th, took the cover off, opened the choke and after two tries it fired up no problem. Didn't touch the carbs before or after storage.

When it's below 10C, it takes make 5-7 good minutes of warming up before throttle response is regular.

Shanetodd wrote: ↑I've got a carb'd 750 (2001) and have no issues with starting it. Put it away last year in December, filled it with gas, used fuel stabilizer and trickle charged the battery. Come April 10th, took the cover off, opened the choke and after two tries it fired up no problem. Didn't touch the carbs before or after storage.

When it's below 10C, it takes make 5-7 good minutes of warming up before throttle response is regular.

In your opinion, do you think it's fine to stick to a carb bike or switch to a EFI bike?

HelloOppa wrote: ↑In your opinion, do you think it's fine to stick to a carb bike or switch to a EFI bike?

Don't now how Shanetodd feels but for a non mechanical person, a EFI engine is far better and practical and more reliable than an engine with a carburetor.
To a purist, carbs are the only way to go.

I just wanted a cheap bike to learn on, didn't really pay attention to fuel delivery and ended up with a bike with carbs. I've found it easy to work on but I've only owned one bike so I don't know how much I can contribute.

All I know is I've had zero issues in 5 years with starting it after a winter or in cold temps.

Carbs are fine as long as you can still get parts for them.

My '09 Ninja 250 used to take a long time to warm up (5+ mins). My preference is for a fuel injected bike

Carbs can be a real pain sometimes if you're not mechanically inclined. Never mind choke and warming up and possibly stalling the bike.

Maintenance wise syncing is a big issue with multiple cylinders that I found painful to deal with.

Sometimes it doesn't stop there. A minor crack in the air hose/boot in my case on a ninja was very difficult to diagnose as it caused sputtering under very specific circumstances that were nearly impossible to reproduce

If you can afford a newer fuel injected bike go for it. I couldn't afford one and spent way too many hours troubleshooting misfires and hesitations/sputters that I could be riding.

I have carb'd two bikes. One of them recently had a flooded carb, probably from a stuck diaphragm and or float.

I have a carburated 750cc Kawasaki. Slight problemsl starting it after 5 months hybernation... other times it starts like a match. I dont miss fuel injected at all.

Jermyzy wrote: ↑My '09 Ninja 250 used to take a long time to warm up (5+ mins). My preference is for a fuel injected bike

Carburetors have nothing to do with arming up the engine. They only deliver the fuel.

I had a Hyosung gt250 for a short time when I started riding which had carbs..

I had some problems starting below 10c or so, but enough playing with choke would get it going.

I eventually moved to a fi bike as I simply wanted something that would work in a instance without playing with anything, risking flooding etc.

Carbs are cheaper to fix and if you plan on travelling around the world easier for any mechanic to fix.
FI are less maintenance and for the most part pretty simple to live with.

Jermyzy wrote: ↑My '09 Ninja 250 used to take a long time to warm up (5+ mins). My preference is for a fuel injected bike

I had the same problem. Carbs can ice up, especially wet cold weather with a cold engine.

I had a 1978 Honda CB400 that's carb. Really rough starts in cold weather... But easy to fix. I downloaded a PDF guide, and with the help of youtube... I was able to take it apart and clean it out.
That fixed it and made it start nicely.

30+ year old bike . . .

I also had an old vespa.

EFI all the way

I had a carbed bike (still do, but it's not on the road anymore) and it was a hassle. Since I owned it, I had to do a tear down and rebuild of all th carbs every other season. Part of the reason was because I had too many toys and not enough time to ride, so the carbs kept gungking up. Syncing was never a problem for me with a good syncing tool.

My plan is to rebuild it once again and then sell it for good and just stick with my new bike. With that said, coming from working on cars, I'm also a lot more familiar with sensors and efi when it comes to troubleshooting as well, so it's simpler in my opinion.

We managed to get by riding for 100+ years with carburetors. I have 60,000km on my current bike ('77 KZ1000) and just did my first carb rebuild after 30 years in storage. While EFI is convenient, I would not let it be the deciding factor in choosing a bike. CensoredByRFD, what type of bike would require a rebuild every other year? I put 10s of thousands of kms on my previous bikes, too and never did a rebuild of the carbs.

EFI all the way. Less maintenance, and less finicky. Much easier startups during cold weather.
No need to adjust the fuel tank valve either.

I have had many carburated bikes over the years. I rejetted a couple for fun and extra HP (put them on the dyno to see actual gains). Never had a problem after the winter (i did proper winterization). If there is a carburated bike in your price range... go for it, just do some research first.

smacd wrote: ↑We managed to get by riding for 100+ years with carburetors. I have 60,000km on my current bike ('77 KZ1000) and just did my first carb rebuild after 30 years in storage. While FI is convenient, I would not let it be the deciding factor in choosing a bike. CensoredByRFD, what type of bike would require a rebuild every other year? I put 10s of thousands of kms on my previous bikes, too and never did a rebuild of the carbs.

2001 Suzuki Katana 600. Not sure, but maybe it's the design that's worse than others? I think the previous owner may have jetted it as well.

And part of it, could be the fact that you put tens of thousands of kms on our bikes, which mean you ride them quite often. I had too many toys and it was inconvenient being in a condo, so at that point, I would ride it a lot for spurts and then let it sit for a month at a time. I used non-ethanol gas as well. Usually if I take the bike out on a nice hard highway run after letting it sit, things are fine. Otherwise, the floats get stuck, the idle goes wonky and sometimes the damn thing just floods and won't start. Then I rebuild, resync, and I'm usually good for the rest of the season.

Maybe I needed to put fuel stabilizer in the tank at all times due to moisture? I don't know. But at this point, I'm just going to rebuild, and sell and enjoy my other bike that is EFI.