Carbs/Throttle bodies

[JamesAE86]

fitting carbs or throttle bodies to an AE86 4AG-E engine, very very mild tune as a daily driver - good or bad idea? drivability, durability, economy and reliability are the most important things. wanted more for the look and sound than any performance. What else is needed besides the carbs? ITB's from the 20v a good idea? I've an idea how and why they work but maybe someone in the know could clarify? problems with emissions, starting first thing from cold, fuel economy, tuning for different weather conditions etc.??

[Ivan141]

If you're going to invest the amount needed to make this run as good as your stock intake you might as well go for all out performance. You need at least an adapter plate to fit them, do custom fabrication on the throttle linkage and the TPS sensor. Then you'll need an ECU to make it run properly, otherwise you'll more likely loose power.
All in all I wouldnt go there just for the looks. Carbs also sound cool and require a bit less fabrication, but I'm no expert on those things. Just know that you would need to bring down the fuel pressure a bit and I think you can let the factory ecu handle the timing. With carbs a nice performance gain is usual, but it'll give you worse fuel consumption and possible trouble with changing weather circumstances.

[Dorito86]

If you want drivability, durability economy and reliability, stick with EFI. Even the best carb setup cannot match EFI for these prerequisites in the long run.

Of course you can swap the engine with a stock 20v and have it all plus the sound!

[Darkstar]

The ability of being daily driven would become very questionable with aftermarket ITB's or carbs. It's quite different with the 20v units, as this system was engineered with everyday use in mind. I bet that any ITB setup would be way easier to set up than a custom carburettors, especially these days, when you don't see many people proffesionally tuning Webers, Dellortos or Keihins. As Ivan has already mentioned, changing weather and elevation might also affect this - imagine waking up when it snows, and your car not firing up when you want to go to work...

If I were you, I would consider a nice single throttle setup as an alternative. There once was a gorgeous late-model Trueno coupe at hipertekspeed.com (the admin changed the design since then, and all those cars were deleted), with nice suspension and a prepped non-TVIS AE92 redtop with 272 cams, hi-comp pistons and some other goodies, which ran a custom intlet manifold with reworked injection system (it had a full fuel rail with bigger injectors), and used a throttle body with a velocity stack that created the Venturi effect, without any air filter (you shouldn't leave it like that though, the dust from the road would make the engine go to the "Kaboom!" mode real fast). From what I remember, it made about 170HP at the crank, so you couln't say it wasn't very efficient. Another thing that could convince you is that in NA drag racing in the States, more and more people are coming back to classic single throttle setups, rather than going into ITB's. But DAMN! Those sounds than an ITB'd or carbed car makes does really make me wish that every manufacturer had even one model with those...

[PetzK]

Carbs aren't that bad, easier to setup than ITB, thus a lot cheaper. People were able to get up in the morning and get to work with carbs for decades, dont forget that.... i also had a twincarbed daily driver, never needed to be adjusted!!

ITB is more difficult and expensive to setup, but afterwards its easier to live with, more fuel efficient etc.