Hello,
I don't object to new technology.
This new fuel system simply represents something which is completely un necessary for me to have fun on a motorcycle. It's easy enough to understand.
Direct injection is just a new to our neck of the woods way of doing a job that's currently handled mostly by carburetors on 2 stroke bikes, with a few exceptions. There are examples, almost exclusively on modern 4 stroke bikes, where the carburetor systems have left something to be desired, performance wise. For example, I know from experience that on an 05 CRF450, the engine frequently just cuts out as you try to nudge it off idle. You'll be coasting into a downhill off camber or something with the clutch in, getting ready to come back on the power, and instead the engine will just flame out.
That is the kind of thing that would have me looking for some alternative. Obviously, something's got to be done about that because it's quite a drag. They solved it, sort of, with EFI. Just that pesky stuff about gas dribbling down and filling up those crank cases on the Hondas. Still, maybe even that's better than having them do that stall out thing so much.
However, on the 04 YZ125 and the 06YZ250, no such problems exist. Also, there are no problems with any of the old bikes. It seems like there's very little potential for a problem unless the bikes owner does something very stupid, which would mess up any machine no matter how it worked. You know what I mean dirty or perforated air filter, bad gasoline, that kind of stuff.
My issue is that since the bikes work so well, perfectly in fact, with the simple system they employ already, I have no reason to be the least bit interested in the "New guy". All the 2 stroke bikes start on the first kick, and run great all day no matter what we put them through. All that in addition to the fact that no "Friendly Neighborhood Dealer" is ever needed, and that's always good news. If carbureted 2 strokes didn't run so well, if they had problems with stalling out, not starting in the blink of en eye, flooding, flaming out, or anything like that, then a replacement for the carb would be way more interesting, but fortunately that's not how it is because they work great.
Some people care about things other than just how the bikes run. I'm not one of those people, for whatever reason. If you care a lot about your bike's emissions, fuel consumption, oil consumption, and all that stuff then you have a very good reason to be interested in DI systems like this. For someone who cares about all that stuff, it's probably worth trading the simplicity, low cost, reliability, and solid functionality of a carburetor for the cleaner emissions and all that. For me, the DI system is of little or no value because the best thing it has to offer in trade for a very substantial increase in complexity, cost, weight, and all that is lower emissions, which I don't really care about with regard to motorcycles.
I don't hate the new technology, I just wish they would try to fix something that's broken that's all. Pick a part of our bikes that doesn't already work great and try to improve that, instead of complicating the good parts by like 3 orders of magnitude. Imagine what that same kind of initiative could have resulted in if it was put to use differently...
Maybe an "Automatic Race Sag Adjust-o-tron"... Or "R2 The Tire Changing Robot"...
It's too bad the oil injection part of the system is so integrated with the rest of it. I would be interested in just the oil injection part if there was some way to toss the rest of the system. I'd just have to figure out how to get it to pump way more oil...
Thanks,
Jim