this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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This suggests to me that you have not dealt with a 4 carb setup on a 4 cylinder bike before.
Never fucking again.
Unless I stumble on a cherry CBX1000. I'd make an exception for that glorious 6-cylinder monstrosity.
Or a bike that has multiple tuned carbs per cylinder that have to be balanced together. Thanks BMW.
Why would anybody design something like that?
The reasoning was: Less cylinders, higher torque, but not enough space for big complicated carbs.
So we'll just put more smaller carbs! Yay yay yippee it works. Ship it. In the next model they kept the same carbs and doubled the cylinders. Power increased with basically the same weight.
Oh I see, they didn't want to design a carb specificly for a single cylinder they didn't make multi-cylinder versions of, and so sticking 2 restricted carbs on was cheaper to design and start manufacture, even if it was more expensive per part and required more maintaince.
BMW is like wha ha ha ha
Hold my beer, or whatever that is in German.
Yeah bier.
But they've done pretty well with their beer.
I have, and those carbs are still far simpler than on cars.
Balancing can be fun (figuring out why the hell does this one always pull more mercury, and how do I balance so they're all reasonably similar).
Have a bike like this currently.
But bike carbs don't have the crazy vacuum lines everywhere, or an EGR system mucking things up.
Never did have to deal with a carbureted vehicle with EGR. Lucky me I guess!
4 CV (vacuum operated) carbs on a 30 year old inline 4 cylinder bike is where I topped out. There were definitely several dark magic ceremonies required to get those to run well (at all throttle positions). God forbid you want to change the intake setup.