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mercury stick or carbmate?

doug45 said:
with the Centurian S coming soon,I was wondering which way to go with a gauge
Click to expand...

You asked a similar question in another thread, so I deleted it from that thread.

Here is my opinion on that. Mercury Sticks cannot be purchased, but there are similar devices made that use columns of inert/non toxic liquid. Columns of liquid can't lie, it is a principal of physics.. Dial gauges can be off, and digital units may or may not be accurate. The advantage of the carbmate is that is easily transported and there is no liquid that can spill out. So buy what you are comfortable using.

I've worked on bikes that were synced by a dealer using electronic equipment. When I used my old mercury sticks, I found them to be off quite a bit. Don't know it was the equipment used by the dealer, or the skill of the technician.
 
I have the original carbstix, the new version with the blue fluid and the carbmate. I prefer the carbmate by far. So much easier to use. But it could be the way I used my carbstix. I use to hang it and it would sometimes rotated while metering, PTA besides the time spent on hanging it. Mercury bounces around a bit too, and sometimes would get started unevenly and would have to restart the motor. Guess it depend on how the stix are set up, I didn't know any other way. A few times I used a step ladder straddled over the front wheel, again PTA. The carbmate can be placed just about anywhere.

The times I've gotten poor results from a shop, it was because of their crappy work and not the tool they used.

For accuracy on the carbmate I switch the hoses to L to R manifolds to confirm the readings is the same. No problem found yet. But the carbmate is more complex and more stuff to go wrong. That said, I hate carburator now and love FI. So far FI hasn't failed me or cause me to do more repairs or maintenance. And it's been 44 years since the first moon landing - electronics; pretty good stuff.
 
thanks for the input guys.....Since there are no longer any Guzzi dealers in my area i'm probably be a regular here.
 
I've owned a couple of mercury sticks and inevitably over the years they get emptied one way or another and given the toxicity of mercury it scares the crap out of me.

I don't know about the carbonate.

A simple 'U' tube manometer made with some plastic pipe and filled with some dyed minerial oil is quick, dirty, cheap and intrinsically accurate.

It will not be as stable as mercury due to mercury's density but if your bike swallows a bit of oil it isn't going to poison the neighbourhood.

Stick some airline valves as available in an aquarium store to dampen the vacuum if you find it dances around too much.

There are some decent electronic manometers and I am not really worried about calibration as you are really only worried about relative readings but you need to find one with the right sample rate so the scale is readable. I've used the motorola MPX pressure transducers with the circuit on the datasheet and it works very well and is dirt cheap.
 
I have used all sort of methods in the past but now use only my Twinmax. I have always had great results and the only drawback is that it sits long enough between uses I always have to put a new battery in it. :laugh:

Marc
 
After dropping and destroying my set of vacuum gauges. I obtained a tecMATE Synchromate and have found it a very very good tool. simple to use and reliable. It gives a direct comparison of the vacuum between 2 inlets on a single line scale and you simply center the reading to get a balance. It also returns revs (low speed only) for setting the idle speed (by counting the input pulses) and the actual vacuum (1 carb only - but if they are balanced, both will be the same)

see http://www.tecmate.com/d_synchromate.php#img

or the cheaper (home based)
http://www.tecmate.com/u_carbmate.php
 
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