...and shaft drives are the way to ride.

Or at least insist on a centerstand which so many modern bikes unfortunately can't fit because of their complex exhaust configurations.

As the happy rider of a 1979 Suzuki GS850G, can confirm.

I abuse O-ring/X-ring chains on my dirt bikes, haven't had any failures besides a mangled master link clip I caught

As a long time gear-head with lots of various engines around (cars, motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc. etc.) I would second this. Never buying a carburated thingy again. Its electric motor or fuel injection.

Carbs are also great. My xr650r can sit in a shed for 300 years and if it was clean when stored will start up in 2 kicks or at worst in 15min after opening the bowl with one screwdriver and cleaning the jets.

There is no fuel pump to break (or weight the bike down), I could run the carb with a soda bottle if I had to. There are no complex computers to break and brick the bike.

Beyond the reliability, the real value of the carbs is the FEEL. This bike is analog, the rumbling sounds, the brilliant popping and gurgle on deceleration. Its a motorcycle, mechanical gear changes, cable operated throttle, controlled explosions.

We loose something with tft displays, riding modes, non analog throttles, and every granny safety algorithm in between our brains and the rear tire.

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.

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

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.

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

> We loose something with tft displays, riding modes, non analog throttles, and every granny safety algorithm in between our brains and the rear tire.

My EFI bike has none of these.

EFI is just fuel metering. And properly designed EFI can theoretically do even better at a carb at doing what you've commanded the bike to do, because it can adjust fuel mapping in many more dimensions than a couple of needles.

I love my carb'd bike for what it is, but it ain't any better at doing what I've told it to do. It has character, and I can appreciate it for what it is, but it is not more precise or direct in feel than my EFI bike.

I just revived a car that’d been sitting way too long, just needed a new battery and an oil change (actually, it already ran OK, but I got the oil change just in case). Fuel injection is magic. So, what car stuff has taught me about the universe is… mistreat objects, they aren’t sentient, you just make them do what you want.

Someone needs to write “Zen and the art of keeping my filesystem tidy” or “Zen and the art of keeping a rolling release distro up to date.”