I am planning to buy my first Harley ever, a 2006 Deuce with 3500 miles. it has a carburetor as opposed to fuel injection. I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the pros and cons of a carburetor when you consider performance and maintenance.

 

I start it up about once a week for a little while if I don't ride, and actually through the winter ride a bit (suffer the cold, it's good to keep it running). Also when I am done riding for the day, I cut the fuel off and let it run out of the fuel lines, that way it will last a lifetime.....you want to keeping it running so your carb doesn't gunk up....

 

Fuel injection is nice and is basically maintenance free as far as tuning goes, but if you decide to change pipes or air filters, a carbed bike is much easier to deal with. For injection, you would need to program it.

 

The one advantage is simplicity. No sensors or cpu to fail, less wiring, possibly easier to mod, no fuel pump. disadvantages: harder to start when cold, doesn't adj afr to altitude if riding through large elevation changes.

 

def harder to start when cold lol, well not harder to start, just harder to keep running, I let the choke run for a couple minutes and I'm fine

 

I would take the Carb over efi anyday. Easy to tune they sound better and cheap to upgrade. The efi is 400 to 900$ to tune crappy high idle. Big deal they run better in cold how often am I out when its 35 degrees

 

All opinion here... I have met guys who have had trouble with carbs due to deposits, and others, not a bit of trouble. For long term storage, you need to look at petcock position, turn it off. Put fuel treatment in for storage. Whole thread on here for that, I use Stabil for ethanol fuel. In cold humid weather I have had trouble with carb icing, no real solution for that. Mine has the Sportster needle mod and the idle mixture adjusted, it runs good and gets 44mpg, starts readily and is easy to keep running when cold.

 

CV (constant velocity) carbs do pretty well with elevation changes. They originally designed cv carbs for airplanes. You'll run a tad rich above 7k-8k ft, but no big deal. Temperatures usually drop when you get that high up anyway (not always) so the cooler air helps compensate for the decrease in air pressure/density.

As far as carbs getting gunked up, the best way to avoid problems is to use an inline fuel filter, and don't let the gas evaporate out of the float bowl. Either make sure the float bowel stays full, or drain it (or 'run it dry') before long term storage. I liked having the old manual style petcock (not vacuum activated) so I could turn it on once a week if I wasn't riding it to let the float bowel fill up. With the vacuum petcocks you can't get fuel to flow without cranking the motor to draw a vacuum (or I guess you could use a syringe to draw a vacuum on the hose).

 

Lots of the older HD riders still prefer the Carb. Easier to DIY's

Lot of older riders love EFI once they have it.

Since 07 we don't have a choice.

Its all personal choice on the older Bikes.

 

Had my 87 Lowrider for 15 years, trade it for a 03 Fatboy with a carb never had a problem with the carb on either bike. Put them away in the fall and got them out it the spring, never did anything beside shut the gas off. All start easy when I got them out. I would buy a carb bike in a minute if I was in the market for something else.