Carb balancers - which is best?

I'm buying my Dad a set of carb balancers for his birthday (kind of like Homer buying Marg a bowling ball for hers).

They would have to suit his GTR 1000 and (preferably) also my 98 ZX9-R.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with these and which ones are best? Also can they be used for adjusting throttle butterflies on F.I. bikes?

Thanks in advance!

my neighbour has a set of carbtunes with the little steel rod that goes up/down according to manifold vacuum. he said they were about $130ish or so. If he didn't have one to borrow "whenever i want to" then i would have bought one myself, worth the money.

from memory there are two major brands on the aus market. One costs around $100 and the other around $170.

get the more expensive one.

I just got a set through a frame straightener shop up here for 150. It's the dial type and a little fiddly to use but it wont break like the mercury ones seem to do on a regular basis. I have never seen them for sale in bike shops so you'll have to sniff around. Get a more expensive one if ya can, but having said that, it's all in a sharp eye and your ability to tweak them just right.

I rode my bike for a few months after I bought it and it had plenty of power, ran seemingly smooth too, but when I checked the balances on the carbs one was way out! This suggested to me that you can get away with a lot of minor error and not have any real loss of power etc.

You can get shim kits too, for around $150, that have hundreds of little shims for ya kwaka services.

I got my set of carb sync gauges from Z-Power in Sydney .. am very happy with them for the price ....

http://www.zpower.com.au/product_info.php/products_id/395?osCsid=19a7eddaa2dee90556fc83ead7226990


Carbtune in the U.K. have a good set .. they use rods in tubes rather than dial gauges .. you can buy online direct from them too.

http://www.carbtune.com/

I also picked up one of their Colortune plugs, but I got that off eBay for a good price.

HTH

as said by birdrock, ive used the carbtune, bloody good bit of kit.

Thanks for the feedback!! I've done a fair bit of looking around and it sounds like the Carbtune balancers are the money. They're not the cheapest ones, but not the most expesive either. Theres no mercury to spill, no glass to break and unlike guages, they dont need to be calibrated occasionally. And apparently they are very accurate. Think I'll get them. The old boy should be stoked.