Ask The Editors: Has Fuel Injection Slowed Our ATVs?

Carbs have been all but replaced by fuel injection. But is there a downside?

Well, you’re not the first person to report having experienced this phenomenon but there are some logical explanations involved in why this may be. The first of which is the smooth nature of fuel injection. Often times, because the power delivery can be so much silkier with fuel injection, it’s easy to dismiss the output as slower than the more pronounced hit a carburetor can produce.

Remember that carbs are mechanical devices that rely upon gravity and tiny holes in brass nozzles to deliver fuel. This means that no matter how well tuned, there are bound to be slight dead spots and surges in the delivery process as the engine’s vacuum fluctuates.

Fuel injection foregoes a lot of these peaks and dips by relying upon an electrically powered/ electronically controlled fuel pump to deliver consistent pressure regardless of how fast or slow the engine is spinning. This inevitably smooths out the curve and allows power to be applied evenly across any RPM.

In addition to be smoother, fuel injection offers near infinite tunability. Or, another way to say it, if you wanted to mess around with your machine’s FI settings, we’re positive you could map it to mimic the pronounced hit of your friend’s carbureted machine if that was your only concern. Keep in mind that our machines come from the factory set up to operate well and deliver linear power in as many conditions as possible. That doesn’t mean there aren’t riders out there who may need things like a punchier low end or more over-rev to make the most out of the conditions they favor. Tweaking fuel maps is an art form for these situations.

Lastly, fuel injection itself hasn’t slowed our machines down but nor is it exactly a performance enhancement either. It came over from the automotive wold not to burn the knobs off our tires but to make our machines run correctly in a wider variety of conditions without the need to swap carburetor jets for conditions like elevation or temperature.

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