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by ben7799 1096 days ago
Car guys are almost completely unable to understand the "feel" difference you're talking about between carburetors and EFI because the car's controls are separated by so many levels from the engine and basically all street cars have such huge flywheel mass that you can't really feel what the engine is doing.

And the # of people who ever drove a car that had separate throttle butterflies + carbs for each cylinder is miniscule. Even with EFI not many people have driven a car that is built like a motorcycle. Pretty much only supercars are built that way.

Most cars with carbs seem to have had far more issues than bikes too.

2 comments

Lots of fairly pedestrian late 50s and 60s cars had multiple carbs and synchronization procedures needed to get them to be streetable. (These were common on physically long L6 (inline) engines.)

I’d bet a fair number of old people and old car enthusiasts have driven them.

My 65 and 66 Mustangs run great as long as I don’t let modern ethanol-polluted gas sit in them.

> a car that had separate throttle butterflies + carbs for each cylinder

What cars had these?

I imagine it makes for an amazingly close interaction between driver and vehicle

Many cars for fuel efficiency or performance.

In modern fuel injected cars, secondary intake and fuel injection systems get more complex with rpm; typically its about 3500 rpm or 50% throttle position cause a different fuel map, an intake runner flapper, and for the last 30 years, some automatic cam timing adjustment.

yeah, I'm familiar with the modern fuel injection engines - this conversation was about carburretor engines
They're not all that fancy. My dad's 1967 Volvo 122s had two carbs for a four cylinder engine. It always failed the emissions test and I can't say that it ever purred like a cat.
Hard to imagine a 67 on an emissions test, I'd guess that would be grandfathered.