Which to chooe for a 13b. Mikuni 44 ofr weber 48. Anyone with experience using either or both

 

Mikuni. Im at a christmas party right now with about 5 retired mechanics. They say mikuni is better for the simple facts that:

You can walk into any bike shop and get parts

They are very easy to play with

They are very reliable

Simply put, with a weber, you have to wait for the carb, then wait for the parts if it breaks. They are expensive and very very hard to tune and deal with without breaking them. I think mikuni is definetly an excellent choice. I see them more and more common these days.

 

ok i'm confused.... are these carbs? so why would you carb a EFI engine?

 

Upgrades my friend. Not everyone is willing to pay the $1500+ for an engine management system.

 

I've got a Mikuni on my 84 GSL-SE. Haven't had the car very long and I'm just learning about carbs, but it looks like (and I was told that) it was used for amatuer racing and it runs pretty strong and smooth for me. Rough tuning is pretty simple. Haven't got the skills/time to do any fine tuning yet, so no opinion there. Overall setup with the fuel lines and all is VERY basic with just the line in and the return line blocked off. It's the setup it came with and I haven't messed with it because it's not giving me any problems. So my experience with it is you can get reliable (better than average?) performance with minimal hassle.
Bottom line: Simple+Working=Good in my book (particularly with 7's) and the Mikuni seems to meet that

If any gods of the carb would want to post tutorials....^_^

 

but its a FUEL INJECTED! why would you put a carb on? i dont get it... thats spetting down a notch is it not? i mean... EFI is better then carb... so why would you and how can you put a carb on a EFI... they made SE's EFI for a reason... they put out more power... so why would you put a carb on a lose power?

 

Who's to say it is fuel injected? Just because it is a 13B, does not mean that it is an -SE.

I have a Mikuni carbed 13B 4 port, if you are wondering. I love the Mikuni for its all around ease. Performance is great, but parts availibility and tuning ease is what sets it apart for me.

 

what! are all 13b injected! thats why they're called 13Bs... and thats why there was 12a ... carbed... 13Bs fuel injected....

 

REPU, RX-4 and Cosmo were equipped with 13-B and carb not FI. I would rather use a weber than mikuni. its easier to find parts.

 

well thats gay... they should have just called it 12a... instead of confusing the hell outta everyone lol

 

Fuel Injection has its limits. Meaning, if you want to upgrade injectors, from what I gather you need to get some kind of after market computer. But with a carburetor, you just slap on whatever size you need. I personally find that a carburetor is much more reliable and flexable then Fuel Injection. The debate can rage on whats better, but it all boils down to preference.

 

yea i've never driven a carbed engine so i cant say i dotn like... but as of now i prefer EFI... lol only car i've driven... and less tuning involved lol

 

Thats the thing though, less tuning. If you want to tune EFI, it costs BIG bucks. But on the other hand, 90% of the Race RX-7's I've seen with 13B's run carb'd engines. Same with most of the street ones.

 

Dude, they call 12A a 12A because it's (about) 1.2 liters, not because it's carbed. Likewise, a 13B has 1.3 litres.

I could go on, 20B, 2.0, you get the point.

LOL!

 

why not 20A to keep it in alpha order

 

OHHHH!!!! i get it now!! lol never knew that

 

Gotta learn sometime

 

I will swap to carb becasue I want to port the engine. The factory efi will not handle too much porting, and as Alak said it is very costly to go to a stand alone unit. The carb is very tuneable, doesn't have the restriction that the factory afm offers and thus can improve performance by 20-30 hp(from what I hear) with much less expense than modifying the efi set-up with a piggy back, stand alone or extra injectors. I would like to bridge the secondaries and perhaps the primaries (with a 12a centerplate) and hope to achieve over 200hp with the weber or mikuni. This is possible with a streetport, but I would like to push it up a notch if possible. Sure efi would be better if this was a daily driver hoping to rack up thousands of miles a year, but I'll only be driving it 7 months a year, and maybe 5000 miles/year at the most. So, if a good bridge will give me 60,000 miles, we're looking at 12 years of driving pleasure. I have ruled out turbo for reliablility sake, and becasue I like the simplicity of n/a. I grew up in the muscle car era long before many of you were in kindergarden, I enjoy the hobby of tweaking and tuning. Back in my day when I was young like many of you, I could take a stock 350 nove, modify the secondaries on the 4 barrel, recurve the distributor and make the thing fly. I have had, in order, 68 galaxie XL 390, 74 transam sd455, 77 camaro rally sport, 71 gran prix, 72 240z (one of the funnest cars I ever owned, cammed up, header and triple carbs), 70 chevelle ss 396 (damn! never should have sold that one!), 83 f150 4x4, 74 camaro z28 (427 L88, 8000 rpm of ground pounding big block),then came marriage, the baby carriage and a honda. Now , kids are grown & gone and it's time to drive something fun again.

 

It's much cheaper to modify a se to carb for initial gains of hp. Without modifying to like a s4 or s5 turbo with efi and adding the stock harness or standalone you are limited for easy gains of hp. When i first ran a mikuni on a gsl 12a with a rb
header system, it dyno'd out at 142hp at the ctank versus the stock 100hp. This was non ported. ON a se motor non ported you can expect 180-190hp at the crank
or more depending on the jetting and changing of the venturi size. With street
porting on a se the claim was 225hp. Now i do remember a guy that was doing mods many years ago on stock fi systems of the se's that claimed that he could get 200hp out of the stock efi, i believe he was adding either the s4 intake system and using the s4 coils and a stand alone computer. By the way mikuni parts are still available, you just need to know who has them. rx7doctor

 

so can i turbo a SE engine with a carb!? and get huge *** amounts of power?!

 

Not huge, but an improvement. Much like going to a header. It's all in the tuning though. Best suited a patient do-it-yourselfer.

 

Explain to me what specifically breaks in a weber. There aint that much to break! Tuning is very easy if you read the book too. Id take a weber over a holley anyday. Although ive never had any experience with mikuni. I can swear by weber. Mine has been goin on 22,000 miles and hasnt broke a thing yet

 

I was wondering the samething???

 

If you playing around with it and break something. Changing jets, whatever it is your doing. I dont know. I've never dealt with webers. I just listen to what all the mechanics tell me. I never said it was a bad carb. I love them, just hate the price. I'd have an IDA48 right now if it cost less than my engine. Instead I chose Holley route for 3 reasons.

It was the fraction of a price of the weber.

VERY VERY Easy to get parts for because they are everywhere. Jetting kits are like $40 and come with EVERYTHING and take only minutes to change.

And 84Stock has been tuning since I before was in diapers so I can let him at mine.

When you compare to a Mikuni, you can get parts for a mikuni at relatively ANY bike shop. Wether it be jets, linkage or what have you. 84Stock is a tuning fanatic with carburetors. And with the amount of stuff he'll be doing with them, I suggested Mikuni for ease of budget and ease of parts. With a weber, not only does he have to wait for parts and kits and whatever, the thing is probably more than twice the price of a mikuni. I called looking for weber parts. Most shops just laughed. Mikuni? My uncle knows 3-5 owners of shops personally that carry almost any part, seeing as hes an uber motorcycle mechanic.