FUEL 4/2015 WIZARD OF FLOW

Carburettor? That makes many people tremble. Not Thorsten Ihlo. "The heart of the engine," he says. If that's true, he's nothing less than a heart surgeon of a special kind. And of course it's true.

It is always difficult to find a beginning when there is none. Or several. One beginning of this story is as follows: The agreed appointment is only in half an hour. Thorsten Ihlo opens the door anyway, he smiles, he shakes your hand and invites you into his house. Rock music is playing, Thorsten is still having breakfast, he is spooning oatmeal with Nesquik, and little by little a conversation starts that feels as if you have not just met, but have known each other for years.

Sometimes it's much less about carburettors than it should be about carburettors, and that's not because Thorsten himself is more important than his work. He says: "My work is the focus, not me." But without him, his work wouldn't be his work, it would be just any work. It would be arbitrary. And Thorsten Ihlo's work is just as little like that as its result. You can tell that from the way he talks about it, calmly and always with equal measure of enthusiasm and modesty.

It makes no difference whether he overhauls a Dell'Orto, cleans a Weber, Mikuni or Keihin, or tunes a New Old Stock S&S so that it harmonizes with a machine it was never intended for. Whether he restores an old carburetor so that it works like new but retains the dignity of age.

Whether he builds a custom carburetor, like he did for Uwe Ehinger's Speedster, a crazy feat because he had to get the old Linkert M74B in such a way that he could cleanly breathe this hybrid of flathead and knucklehead with its open valve control.

So it doesn't matter how complicated, how expensive, how comprehensive, how special or how unique the task is that Thorsten, whom others - not himself - like to call the Wizard of Flow or Guru of Carbs, devotes himself to. What matters is how he approaches these carburettors, how he reproduces parts for hundred-year-old mechanics, for example. He does it as if it weren't just mechanics and as if it weren't just parts.

"It's become a fetish," says Thorsten, grabbing his beard with one hand. "But I don't know why I developed such a thing for carburettors." That brings us to the second beginning of the story, the beginning that isn't really a beginning, but rather a transition, a development. Because the day when Thorsten lhlo would have said: "I'm going to make carburettors now" never happened. "I didn't make a decision," he says, and "I didn't have any ideas." But after years of tinkering, he has a feeling: "People often say that the engine is the heart of the motorcycle. That could be. For me, at least, the carburettor is the heart of the engine."

A matter of the heart, then. But not sentimental nonsense. Otherwise, they would hardly come to him from the USA and ask: "Thorsten, we're making a show bike, can you get the carburetor fixed for us?" He can. Even if it's often difficult. "I think most people," says Thorsten, "are afraid of the carburetor. They want to install it and have nothing more to do with it." This could be because problems with the carburetor don't necessarily have to come from the carburetor.

"It's usually the ignition." Secondly, problems are never that easy to fix unless it's a standard overhaul. "There are so many rules you have to follow - or get around - so many variables. Dimensions, jets, settings, intake tract, mechanics. It takes time until everything is in harmony and works. Often you go two steps forward and then three steps back. Or four. You have to want something like that."

He wants to. Or can he not do anything else? Probably both. "If you overhaul a 100-year-old carburettor, for example, there are no parts left for it. You have to rebuild two thirds of it. These are immense challenges." For example: turning and milling jet needles, jets or jet blocks, or putting a worn throttle valve shaft back into the housing so precisely that the valve moves freely, but the carburettor doesn't take in any extra air. "I'm meticulous about that," says Thorsten. "It shows how good you really are. A nerdy topic," he calls it, and he's also making fun of himself.

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Ihlo.carburetor.com Carburetor restoration from the expert: Thorsten Ihlo. Precision for historic vehicles. Individual solutions for collectors and specialist workshops.