One of the most undesirable side-effects that comes with too-high compression ratios is an enormous difficulty in getting an engine to "carburet" cleanly. When the compression ratio is too high, you'll find that an engine's mixture-strength requirement has a sharp hump right at its torque peak that no motorcycle carburetor can accommodate. You'll realize, after working with high-output two-stroke engines, that all of them are to some degree liquid-cooled - and that the cooling liquid is gasoline. It is
true that an over-rich mixture tends to dampen the combustion process, and reduce power, but here again we find ourselves faced with the necessity for finding a balance between evils: We have overheating to rob power on one side, and we can cool the engine with gasoline, but too much fuel also robs power. The solution is a beggar's choice, in which we try to find the cross-over point between overheating and over-rich mixtures.
