Another "Is Fuel Injection a Worthwhile Upgrade?" Question

In my case, outside of the ECU, every single part is something from a production car made in the last 25 years. You can buy them at at auto parts store anywhere. I can tell by the picture his isn't much different short of the coils, which I may just not know the application (I have the exact same TB). Losing an injector or coil will not keep you from getting home. Neither will losing the TPS, IAC, CLT, IAT, O2 on a single failure. I would say overall the thing that would make the engine not run in a system like this is if you lost the crank sensor. I used a Ford Ranger 3.0 sensor, which is VR (which is not a smart sensor, its literally a coil of wire with a magnet), they are unlikely to fail in the first place. Same with a total ECU failure IMO.

I've got about 7k miles on mine with the EFI, not a single failure of anything. The coils, cam sensor (5.2 magnum distributor base) were used when I put it together.

If you looked at the two types of "engine management systems" because EFI is not just a fuel system, using a DFMEA, you'd find that the EFI has more components, but each component is simpler (outside of the ECU), but there are more of them. A carb alone has a myriad of things that can go wrong. I think you would have to score a carb/distributor as more likely to have a failure in the case that the parts have good quality. Dirt can be a problem for both (carb is more likely to actually be stopped by it since basic fuel injector cleaner usually gets an underperforming injector back to normal) but there's nothing in an EFI system that the E10 fuel eats up like the fuel pump diaphragm or power valve. It's also less likely to develop a leak since all the seals are o-ring or NPT on the rails.

Its frankly odd and embarrassing to see that none of these carb makers went to using o-ring parameter seals on the fuel bowls and metering blocks for example. There just hasn't been a mindset to eliminate all failures. Especially in these more expensive billet carbs.

If you want to run a carb, great, you can live with the compromises. If you were doing $1500 carbs + MSD Box + ProBillet Distributor+ Datalogging +Wideband + E-fan controller + 2 step, its getting to parity on price now. Your chances of getting it right with EFI for every situation are still a lot higher. Way easier to get help if you need it also since you can literally email someone the tune and the datalogging trace.
I do not doubt you and appreciate the input but I know quite few guys that have run "affordable" all in one efi kits and not had that level of success with dependability. I also know a few guys that have pieced together systems and the horsepower/performance results were not as good as what could be had with a more expensive truly tunable system or a carb.
I do not discourage anyone from running efi if that's what they truly desire, no different than picking a turbo or nitrous but to argue one is truly an upgrade to the other there are many variables that need to be considered. One is inherently more basic to install, generally cheaper and gets the job done quite sufficiently when tuned properly.