I am about to buy an R1 engine. Which to choose - an 1998/9 carb or a 2002 injection?
There's not much in it on price or power. I don't plan to tune it up and I don't plan to race it.
apart from one being older, which is better for use in a car?
which is easiest to get through SVA?
which is most reliable?

I had a long think about this one before I bought my engine, and to be honest I was still slightly favouring the carb setup when I bought the injection engine because of the simplicity, but there were no late carb engines around at the time so I bit the bullet and went FI

Apart from the obvious injection / carb thing, they are pretty much identical mechanically, so will be as relaible as each other assuming they are both in good condition to start with. Make sure the early engine isnt in fact a 98, if so read up on their clutch issues as the early engines had some clutch components replaced under warranty as they were a little fragile.

I think the carb engine overall would be a slightly cheaper way to do it as with the FI you need a Power Commander or similar, to adjust the fuelling (about £200) then a RR session to set it up, whereas the carbs should just need a rejet and a RR session to be set up correctly. For FI you also need a high pressure fuel pump which are sometimes more expensive, plus maybe tank mods to allow fuel return or a submerged pump etc, so that may cost a bit more too compared to a £20 carb fuel pump.

The beauty with FI though is that you can tune it yourself with the Power Commander software and/or can have multiple maps set up and uploaded in seconds, ie a lean map for SVA/MOT and an optimum one for every other time. I would hazard a guess that an FI engine would be slightly easier to get through SVA emissions because you have this kind of adjustment, but Ive never tried either so others are probably better placed to comment.

As for complexity, I havent started mine yet so maybe Im counting chickens, but I haven't found the loom much more complicated than the carbed blade one, there are more sensors etc but its all pretty straight forward still.

Chris

[Edited on 5/4/05 by ChrisGamlin]

So you're saying that either is good?

Yup, power wise there's meant to be sod all in it, the FI might have a bit more mid range and start/idle more cleanly but not hugely different. The only other advantage with the newer engine is that - its newer! Mine is immaculately clean and only done 4k miles, I think you'd struggle to get a 98/99 engine in similar condition.

A lot of it boils down to costs, look at the overall cost difference (inc the other bits I mentioned) then make a choice on that, for me it was a matter of about £3-400 more for FI which I didnt think was really worth it at the time, but now Ive got it Im glad Ive gone this route for the ease of tuning with the Power Commander. For example I am planning on having two silencers and two air filtering systems, a chopped down airbox and a large restrictive can for really quiet trackdays, and probably an open sausage filter and free-er flowing silencer for other trackdays. With carbs thats not really a viable option (unless you have two sets of carbs) as you'd likely need to get them re-jetted in order to make it run well with both setups. With the FI and Power Commander, you just link it up to a PC and upload a different fuelling map in a matter of a few seconds.

Chris

[Edited on 6/4/05 by ChrisGamlin]