The pros and cons

Installing bike carburettors has proved to be a major improvement for the car, for the following reasons:

• The engine now runs much smoother, with very easy starting and a steady tick-over;
• Although the power is not noticeably higher, it comes in more smoothly and from a lower engine speed, so is much more usable;
• The persistent stink of petrol has now gone when parking the car in the garage after a run;
• The carburettors are far easier to set up (with the correct equipment), and much simpler;
• They are much, much cheaper than twin horizontal Weber DCOE carburettors;
• The four carburettors look good under the bonnet!

There are some disadvantages, however:

• The conversion took much longer than I expected, mostly due to tuning issues (and to me being a fussy builder!);
• There are very few engine tuners experienced in bike carb installations on car engines;
• The intake roar is a significant and distinctive source of noise - but you may not regard this as a problem!

The final verdict

I started this conversion as a winter project, aiming to get the car ready in early Spring. In the end it was mid-June before I finally got the car near-enough right and, with British summers as they are, I wasted a lot of driving time. Despite all that, I am glad I did the change - the old Weber DGV carb was complicated, getting old, and was difficult to keep in a reliable state of tune. The new carbs are much more effective, possibly 20 years younger, and in almost every respect far superior.

The only thing I'd say to anyone contemplating a similar conversion is "don't under-estimate the time it will take, or the difficulty you may have in getting parts." However, if you can build a car you can get over most problems, and hopefully can find solutions to the rest.

Late update

Well, after a few years of running the bike carbs, I decided that (a) the intake roar was too annoying, and (b) getting the bike carbs professionally tuned was hard to arrange (not many rolling roads will do them) and too expensive (2 or 3 hours at £100/hour). So in the end I reverted to a new Weber DGV 32/36, which is now working very well.