Low tech vs high tech

If I wanted a CB250 I would have bought one. It's a weak argument. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Wait until they come out with pneumatic valvetrains and then the cryin' is really gonna start. We have only scratched the surface of just how ridiculous the VTEC vs.Gear Drive argument can get, wait until we add a third component like pneumatic valvetrains into the mix. Oh the humanity!

I'll stick with the high tech. If you cut your teeth on carbed bikes, it really isn't all that much different from FI, they both do the same thing, they just do it differently. Carbs are inefficient and always a compromise. FI smokes carbs hands down - maybe not from a shadetree mechanics point of view, but from an engineering standpoint there is no comparison. Hell, even dirt bikes are FI now. Times they are a changin' I like the direction it's going, the current high tech environment rewards the analytical approach and the investment of time spent truly learning about the machine.

 

Hey Norcal, lets you and me hit up one of your favorite back roads and do some comparing this summer huh? whats ya say? then we'll see what you think about hi tech vs low tech LOL My low tech carbed 750VFR against your hi tech 6th gen, should be a good show, no?

 

It cracks me up when threads like these go from High Tech vs. Low Tech, to a mines bigger than your's thread. Break out the Viagra.

 

I think I'll convert my '07 to two cylinders that are non-VTEC and carbureted. That way, if anything goes wrong with the new tech, I can limp home on the old tech. If I get horribly sentimental, I can always induce a mysterious oil leak...

 

I like tech, as a young engineer, so much of what I know is computer controlled, easy to manipulate with a few lines of code. I can respect people liking mechanical things that can be fixed with a stick, a rock, a snorkel, and a soup-spoon, whereas you need a PC to adjust a power commander.

When I climb mountains, I bring a Compass to back up my GPS, but I bring the GPS because it is a better, easier, more informative navigation tool.

I dont trust the computerized throttle control quite yet, but hey, this isnt a bunch of goofballs engineering this stuff. If it came out mainstream, I would use it. The only thing I dont like is not having total control over the machine, its why my truck is standard.

I guess I am 50/50 here.

All I know is new-tech moto-gp bikes are awesome, and they beat the stuffing out of the old tech ones. Im not sure if I like it or not, but traction control makes Stoner (who trusts it) almost unbeatable.

 

NORCAL,
I think he's right on track with the topic in like/dislike & comparisons :wink:

But I'd rather see the challenge on a track where you lap time yourselves & switch bikes.

If similar suspension, & rider wts, & abilities, I'd take the the carb VFR over the FI because of smoother delivery of the fuel, & that the V-tec in the FI takes away "more" smoothness from engine to rear wheel power delivery.

Because smoothness on the track in riding & power delivery is what wins most races :clap2:

I can see it now in the Forum headlines, 6th gen battalion not the crack squad it thought it was & defeated by the a older battalion, but superieur bikes

p.s. carbed VS FI above is based on elect controlled FI, because there has been a few bikes of the day that had mechanical FI & I wished Modern M/C's went that route, because you can work on them like the carbs if a problem !

 

I like the concept of efficiency, and fuel injection along with precise ignition is going to help squeeze the most power and least pollution from every drop of fuel. The electronics behind digital fuel injection and ignition are obscenely reliable too.

When I was an Audi technician back in the late 90s, I don't think I ever encounted a computer that was actually defective. Some techs just assumed that computers=flaky and would throw a computer at the car, only to have the fault code or symptom return either right then or a few days later. Most of the time it was something weird like a misaligned sensor or a bad ground in the engine management circuit. It's easy to upset digital electronics with those kinds of things.

According to a friend of mine who is an EE and engineer for a radio station, failure rates for solid state components are exceptionally low. Does anyone have a mid-fi stereo receiver from Best Buy or Circuit City (Pioneer, Onkyo, etc)? Did you know that in an effort to save money, the engineers have the output transistors in those things literally red-lined? They often have the maximum allowable voltage or current on them, and the heat sinks are just barely adequate. Even with that kind of zero-headroom engineering, look at how reliable those things can be.

With that said, I think too much tech is a bad thing. These new exotic (mostly German) cars with menu driven horsepower, differential, and shift settings really weird me out. My Acura has an "adaptive drive by wire throttle", which seems completely silly to me. There's a line that I don't feel good about crossing.

I loved the older analog fuel injection systems, like Bosch L-Jetronic, or the hydromechanical CIS systems like Bosch K-Jetronic. Those were immensely more accurate at metering fuel than carbs, but it was all simple analog transistor logic.