MILD THUNDER

Or a hot air choke from a early 70's Buick

the deep

I were tryin to keep it modern.....

mallatt442

I am old school.... Carbs if ya wanna go fast, EFI if you want ease of operation and dock manners.. some opinions will differ....

TeamSaris

If that was true, Mercury's 1650 "RACE" engine would have carburetors. Our 1500 package would have carbs, as would many other builders. Even when driveability doesnt matter, we prefer EFI. Opinion or not. I think Ill have the opinion that the sky is green lol.
Dont get me wrong and dont take what im saying as any sort of jab, Carbs are just fine, and certainly adequate in a lot of setups and circumstances (my pleasure Kryptonite is carbed), but in no way do they make more power than an EFI engine. Period.

Young Performance

I don't agree. There is nothing about a carb that will cause it to make more power than an EFI engine. I see it as quite the opposite. I will get more aggressive with an EFI than I will with a carb engine. I have unlimited control over the timing, so, for example, I can put 38* in it at 3500 rpm and light load. As soon as you touch the throttle, down comes the timing. You can do that (to an extent) with a carb but it will take almost as much electronics as the EFI engine, and cost almost as much. I can run more timing across the board knowing that I have a very advanced knock protection system that has my back. In no way is it an absolute fail safe, but it does allow you to be more aggressive. If you are talking about a true sequential MPI, then you can dial in each cylinder for maximum performance and longevity.

As for tuning, you can spend a ton of time with some of the newer, fancier, sequential systems. But a basic setup that 98% of the boaters would use, takes no more time to dial in than a carb. It takes as long or longer to truly dial in a carbureted engine to make it the best it can be and offer drive-ability anywhere close to EFI.

If given the choice, I would choose EFI 100% of the time.
Eddie

Orthobam

The only negative thing my current engine builder said is that every EFI motor that went bad was really bad. He said something to the fact that they were torn to pieces if the sensors didn't work and the motor didn't shut down (or something like that). He was very positive otherwise.

I've also heard about every Mercury 1075 and up owner talk about the dreaded "guardian mode" that everyone has experienced at one time or another.

I thinking hard about the conversion now. Great thread!

skaterdave

wonder how you guys fine tune either carb or efi once in the boat ? when ever I've built a motor, new or rebuilt, we've always dyno-ed them and done all adjustments on the dyno. I'm always skeptical when I've seen people messing with jetting or re-programming ecu's based off the seat of their pant.

and yes maybe if it was dyno-ed at sea level and your now in Denver.

TeamSaris

We program every motor on the dyno, THEN we program every motor IN the boat. I drive/throttle, Jason runs the laptop. We are pretty proud of that. Every motor we build is specifically built for the boat in mind. No after-thoughts.
Different drive systems, props, drive heights and hull characteristics change the way every boat and engine combo work. Programming in the boat (or jetting for that mater...) is necessary to really consider something fine tuned.

More Questions, Call Jason at Saris Racing Engines, 518-644-3080

TeamSaris

Guardian Mode is a Merc safeguard not a characteristic of every EFI motor...

skaterdave

hi mike, hope you had a good thanksgiving..........

my point again, I've seen several people mostly w/carb motors mess with jetting or change out entire carb, normally for bigger and say they made more HP or gained speed. now if you can see a mph increase by all means continue on. but I've seen several people just chase their tails. as for efi, I don't run it so I cant say, but I have talked to people that send out ecu's to change parameters based off of similar engines then complain when their re-programmed ecu toasted a motor.

as for air flow sensors and meters, great I understand but how are you watching that at speed or under load ? are you running data loggers ? not seeing how that works if you plug motor in at the dock at idle ?