Originally Posted by
DrDirt
Yeah, carbs are cool. I especially like them when the floats stick and they start barfing fuel everywhere. Power valves, jets, bleeders, squirters. Yeah I remember when my carb parts box weighed more than my tool box. They work...but they should...they have more experience than EFI. OTOH, Commodore 64's work too.
These problems are indicitive of any other thing. If you don't do any kind of preventative maintenance, then yes, things will mess up on you. The floats might stick if you get a dirty fuel filter and some grime gets into them....Just like the injectors will get clogged (with smaller particles) if you ignore the fuel filter. I've never had one do that to me yet...but I've only been running a carb for the last 17 years.
But there's always tomorow I guess.
Power valves...Same story. If the rest is taken care of, then you shouldn't have a problem. My jets, I only changed if I changed something else in the set up. (i.e. camshaft, heads, or intake. Maybe if I changed the height of the rear tires.) The squirters, I never had one get clogged. EVER. I only changed them to figure out the basic tune of the engine. Usually, it was not needed though.
Let me see here,
complete Holley 600 vac secondary: $232
Tuning parts: about $75
Rough total: $307
New injector set: $250 (for anything above 19 lb)
Computer tune: $200-$400 (depending on who you use and how long it takes
Tuning computer if you wish to do it yourself: Unknown because of so many different choices. Roughly around $250-$1200 depending
You have to figure in replacing at least 2 sensors which will cost around $100 each if you're lucky also.
No, I'll always like my carbs better than FI. I still respect FI though because of it's ease of use. Put it in, and if none of the sensors are bad, it fires fright up. Not usually the case with a carb. With a carb, you have to tune it for it to even run at times. But I can do the carb work myself. I can't do anything to FI myself except replace the parts/sensors and hope for the best.