Author Topic: Has anyone done a C5 carb conversion  (Read 10006 times)

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Keef Sparrow

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Reply #60 on: March 18, 2021, 08:07:55 pm
My Euro 4 Bullet Trials EFI starts up fine at around 0°C even without the Bi-starter, although when it's that cold the B-starter will maybe start it up a second quicker, but it's never really needed. It idles fine from cold even in freezing temperatures, although I always let it run for a couple of minutes while I'm getting the last of my gear on before riding off. The engine always seems to pull and run exactly the same cold as when hot, so even if the EFI system is simple it's very effective as far as I'm concerned. Carbs are OK if you actually like fiddling around and have to tweak things to get them right, but I've rather be riding my bike instead of messing around with it. If you actually enjoy having to 'tickle' carbs and mess around with the choke good luck to you, but I'd rather ride with minimum distractions. My Bullet is the third fuel injected bike I've owned and the fuel systems on all of them always worked perfectly and never required any maintenance at all - same with the fuel injected cars I've owned. My bike isn't just a weekend toy for polishing, fettling, and occasional use - I commute on it as well, so I have to know it will always work and not require regular fiddling about with - so the EFI is all good as far as I'm concerned.  :)
Past: CB125-T2, T500, GT500, Speed Triple, 955i Daytona. Now: Royal Enfield Bullet Trials 500


Ove

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Reply #61 on: March 19, 2021, 08:20:56 am
I also have a Norton Commando (single Amal 34 mkII). I spent the last 10 days cleaning the carb through, float levels, guitar string through pilot jet, whole caboodle. What a faff. Esp. as the fault was the spark plugs.

BUT, the bike's throttle feels welded to your brain in a way EFI never manages. Wouldn't dream of swapping it to EFI (if it were possible).


viczena

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Reply #62 on: March 19, 2021, 08:24:26 am
if it were possible, you would certainly experience how quick and direct the throttle would response with an EFI.
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JohnnieK

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Reply #63 on: March 19, 2021, 02:57:07 pm
My C5 is my first bike with EFI. I've had all sorts of bikes with carbs over the years (2 stroke and 4 stroke) and I honestly can't see the difference between EFI and carb. I currently have the C5, a 2012Honda XR650L (45k kms on the clock) and my daughter has a Chinese scooter - also with a carb. All 3 bikes need the choke if it is cold (<15 C) and all 3 starts on 1st swing. They all ride equally well. The only difference is the cost of repairs. A carb will set me back maybe US $50 for the XR and even less for the scooter. The fuel pump alone on the C5 will cost more than a top end rebuild on the XR. If anything ever goes wrong with the EFI on the C5 I will convert to carb.
So I'll stick to carb'd bikes for as long as I can.


suitcasejefferson

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Reply #64 on: March 19, 2021, 05:05:21 pm
The thing is, carburetors and points that are properly designed and made, out of the proper material, will never need fiddling with. And they keep things simple and mechanical. Remember the old TV show The Six Million Dollar Man? He could do all kinds of things better and faster than a normal human, due to his bionic legs, arm, and eye. If it were possible, would you want your legs, arms, and eyes removed and replaced with artificial ones like that? I seriously doubt it. EFI is several times more complicated and expensive than carbs, yet on most vehicles it does not work as well. What is probably a cheap chinese copy of a 1950s British carburetor works WAY better on my Enfield than the crappy EFI. EFI is far from being trouble free. I spent decades working on it (cars not bikes) as a government fleet services mechanic.
"I am a motorcyclist, NOT a biker"
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viczena

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Reply #65 on: March 19, 2021, 05:48:45 pm
So the endless repairs of carbs and points were only due to bad material? Or bad design (that might really be it)? Over severeal decades?

EFi is in comparison absolutely trouble free. Not just in motorcycles , but in billions of cars. They normally last longer than the rest of the vehicle.

Whatif an EFI gets broken? Same as Whatif the crankshaft breaks? Both costly. And both very rare.

But whatif my tank rusts and clogs the injectors? Same as whaitf i put sugar in my tank and the piston stucks?

An EFi works much better than any Carb on the market. It is not dependend on the pressure differential of a venturi to deliver a das/air mixture.

And it is much easier to tune.

A new fuel pump costs 40 Euros. From the manufacturer.
https://www.ebay.de/itm/06-Fuel-Pump-Royal-Enfield-Bullet-Classic-500cc-EFI-NEW-CLASSIC-500cc-571052/392503105912?hash=item5b63021978:g:tbQAAOSwITReJe6f
« Last Edit: March 19, 2021, 05:54:28 pm by viczena »
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AzCal Retred

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Reply #66 on: March 19, 2021, 06:19:03 pm
From a technical perspective most electronics are throw away items, there isn't long term support because the technology is constantly evolving. A 20 year old electrical set up largely is of historical interest. Another stake in the heart against long term support is marketing forces. Profits are maximized by encouraging planned obsolescence.

As Suitcasejefferson points out, barring corrosion damage most carburetors have a very long service life, independent of surrounding technical evolution. Obtaining 30 year old electronics is mostly relegated to NOS and used items.

EFI equipment is largely purpose built, retrofitting isn't really the intent. What would it actually take in cost & effort to add EFI to a 1970 Bonneville, Bullet or Commando? You'd need to know crank angle, so sensors would need to be added there at least. The processor, pump & injectors, temperature sensing would needs be purchased & adapted. What sort of price tag are you looking at?

The CB650 fuel injection project discussed on "sohc4" mentions adapting throttle bodies from a similar machine. As most of the kits seem to be control electronics only, I assume that adapting an existing throttle body is the norm?

https://www.bikebandit.com/aftermarket-parts/motorcycle-fuel-and-air/fuel-injection/pa6
https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index.php?/forums/topic/91356-carb-to-efi-conversion/
http://megasquirt.info/products/diy-kits/
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php?topic=177053.0  (  1980 CB650 fuel injection project  )
xx
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AzCal Retred

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Reply #67 on: March 19, 2021, 06:25:27 pm
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a33237683/sugar-in-gas-tank/

Can Sugar Destroy a Car's Engine?
It's a longstanding legend stretching nearly 70 years. Let's do some mythbusting. Sugar doesn’t dissolve in gasoline. If you add it to gasoline, it stays in granular form.
“We have not seen an engine damaged or destroyed by sugar in a gas tank, nor heard of any truly plausible or established cases of this happening,” says Mohammad Fatouraie, manager of engineering at Bosch, one of the auto industry’s main suppliers of fuel system components.
The Thing About Filters...
A sugar crystal is about 200 microns, a measure of size for small particles. Filters in a car’s fuel system capture particles much smaller than that, so suspended sugar granules in the gasoline would be caught by any one of several filters before they ever made it into the engine. There’s a fabric, sock-like filter surrounding the fuel pump pickup in the gas tank, an in-line fuel filter at the tank pump inlet, a filter on the high-pressure fuel pump in the engine bay, and filters at the inlet of each fuel injector.
Even in a carbureted engine, which doesn’t have fuel injectors or their individual filters, there’s a low chance that sugar would ever make it that far into the engine after all the other filters in the system.
Sugar is roughly twice as dense as gasoline, says Fatouraie, so some granules wouldn’t even make it all the way to the filters. Particles denser than fuel settle in pockets and corners of low-velocity flow, and there are many low-velocity pockets between the gas tank and the engine. If someone dumped sugar in your gas tank and you removed the tank to clean it out, you’d see a lot of the sugar granules collected on the bottom. It could clog the in-tank filters and prevent fuel from flowing properly, and while it’s possible that prolonged running of a car with clogged filters could burn out the fuel pump, Chris Louis, director of engineering at Bosch, says it’s unlikely to reach that point.
If you knew someone dumped a lot of sugar in your gas tank, you’d just have to drop the tank to clean it out and replace the sock filter. You may as well test the fuel pump, to be safe, and if its flow rate doesn’t match the factory specifications, you’d replace it.
Your engine would be fine.
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viczena

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Reply #68 on: March 19, 2021, 06:34:48 pm
Are you in war with the standard font? Or have you lost  your googles?

And after you found them back you realize that we have Ethanol and water in our gas. And sugar dissolves great in water and alcohol. Watch your morning tea.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2021, 06:41:30 pm by viczena »
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AzCal Retred

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Reply #69 on: March 19, 2021, 07:45:17 pm
My goggles are fine. My morning tea tends to not contain much alcohol.
If you have that much free water in your fuel you are going to have other more pressing issues.
No idea about an EFI retrofit price tag?

--------------------------------
https://www.quora.com/Is-sugar-soluble-in-alcohol

Ray Menon, studied at Rutgers University
Answered 3 years ago · Author has 3.2K answers and 4.6M answer views
simple answer is NO. I am assuming that when you say sugar you mean sucrose and when you say alcohol you mean ethyl alcohol.

Sugar and alcohol are generic terms that describe classes of compounds. For example, glucose and fructose are also sugars; methanol and isopropyl alcohol are also alcohols.

Most substances have a measurable level of solubility in any given solvent, at some temperature. Therefore, sucrose also has a measurable solubility in ethyl alcohol. However, solubility of sucrose in ethanol at room temperature is so small that it can be ignored for practical purposes.

Sugar can be dissolved into alcoholic drinks because these drinks contain significant amount of water. Sugar is quite soluble in water.
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viczena

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Reply #70 on: March 19, 2021, 08:35:41 pm
Ethanol binds water. In amounts that lead to rusty tanks.
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AzCal Retred

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Reply #71 on: March 19, 2021, 08:43:37 pm
Fuel tanks were rusting long before ethanol gas. Ambient humidity drawn in by temperature driven expansion and contraction of air over the fuel as well as simple water intrusion & entrainment.
The question being avoided is how would you go about retrofitting EFI onto an older carbed machine and roughly how much time & materials would be involved?
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viczena

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Reply #72 on: March 19, 2021, 09:00:11 pm
So we have water in the tank even without alcohol? My goodness, what a nice message for the sugar.
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viczena

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Reply #73 on: March 19, 2021, 09:03:12 pm
There is practically no way to retrofit an EFi to a motorcycle engine. The most difficult part is the crankshaft sensor and the butterfly manifold.

Sometimes when your bike uses a widespread automobile engine, it is possible.
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Richard230

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Reply #74 on: March 19, 2021, 09:23:35 pm
The EFI of my 2011 Bullet is kind of funky at times as it has a habit of stalling as it is idling at a traffic light when not fully warm and also has a tendency to miss when rolling the throttle back on after riding down a hill with the throttle closed.

However, all of the modern Euro 3 and Euro 4 EFI systems seem to work very well. My only complaint with them is an abrupt throttle response when first opening up the throttle (such as on my 2009 BMW F650GS and my 2020 Duke 390). The older BMW models were noted for surging under a steady throttle (such as did my 2000 R1100R and 2002 R1150R), but that was corrected with the later post-2004 models and now they seem to work pretty well - as least my 2007 R1200R did and my 2016 R1200RS does.   :)
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