I’ve been told by my friends who have raced longer than I have that the first year with a new bike is always a challenge. I’ve certainly experienced that with both my last two (and only two) bikes. Apparently, I also have an innate ability to acquire leaky radiators.

After the Arroyo Seco trip, the 6-8k bog on the engine was worrying me, so figured I’d do a quick dyno pull on the bike and see what was going on. I was confident that — if things were bad — we could map around them with TuneECU. What could possibly go wrong??

Yeah. Right. After the jump…

So the first issue — the initial pull shows the bike running way lean. To the point of why is it not detonating lean — a definite issue, though there’s no white in the exhaust. Spark plugs when Scott and I did the valves weren’t bad either, so that’s rather a mystery, but it was far enough out that it was time to remap.

And thus started the issues (and, to be honest, the learning curve).

Step 1 — turn over to PJs to dyno. The plan is to map with TuneECU, which I had a cable for and everything.

Problem 1 — the map on the race ECU (900003) isn’t in the TuneECU database, so you can’t download it. (This took digging to discover, well after several of the steps before). And it isn’t immediately apparent that you need a 90000x series map for the race ECU, so it looked like TuneECU wouldn’t talk to the ECU, and that led to the rest of the problems and a lot of wasted money.

Step 2 — contact dealers about TRACS software

Problem 2 — it’s expensive and no-one likes it. I got the advice to piggy back the bugger with a PCV.

Step 3 — install PCV, re-dyno

Problem 3 — the bike is throwing a gear position sensor code intermittently, displaying odd maps, and is falling on it’s face at 10k RPM even though the AFR is solid.

Step 4 — replace the gear position sensor, re-dyno

Problem 4 — bike is STILL falling on it’s face at 10k, though getting better. So many possible issues at this point

At this point, it’s all fishing around. I got the bike back, did the research on TuneECU, and loaded a stock 900005 map onto the ECU (possibly obviating the dyno map, but I’m not thinking too hard about that). Pulled the valve covers and checked the valve timing (interestingly, it’s the stock cams on the race ECU, which isn’t going to help matters).

 

However — I’m confident it’s not going to grenade, so it’s on to the second track day (after bailing on the first because of bike and cold) and the first race of the season next weekend!

First year race bike — trials and tribulations!

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