Wonder if anyone can advise me if it,s worth while fitting a power commander ,I have been told by my dealer that if I fit a new can that the ecu can be reset ,the bike run to 80degree,s and it will adjust itself to the correct parameters,any thought,s,sensible ones that is!
I had a racefit growler fitted to mine, the mechanic hooked up his laptop to the brain, did bit of fettling for 30 seconds and all has been fine n well, no need for power commander
Does make me laugh all this ECU reset stuff and here's why: For a start the Lambda sensor is NARROW and has a very limited sensing capability, so how then can the bike set up it's fuelling when the sensor is crap/limited? Second it is only active in the close loop zone from idle to around 4k RPM, in other words it trims the fuel in that zone to keep the bike lean enough to pass euro3 emission laws, third the standard ECU can not be mapped. (I could go into detail but it's late Ha Ha) End of the day a can on its own will not drastically effect the bike enough to cause any dammage to the engine (your main concern) it will effect the AFR and the way the bike feels, if you feel it that's another matter as we all ride in our own way, some may sit around 3k in 2nd or whatever so as I say some will not have a problem and others will complaine of poor fueling. Honda spend an age perfecting the fueling with the standard can, flappers, filter, Lambda active and so on, however they are governed by the emmisons regulations and have no choice to make sure the bikes comply, all of them! Thus a PCV can benefit a standard bike, why? Well because the emissions laws are just that laws that protect the emviroment and sadly what's good for the planet is not good for an engine, an engine needs good AFR ( Air fuel ratio) so mapping a standard bike gives the engine what it needs to perform best, so best power etc is a result of best fuel and air, not environmental laws. So is the PCV and mapping worth the money, well that's something that can only be answered depending on what the rider feels, I.e what I said earlier some feel that the bikes throttle response etc is poor so mapping can solve their problem, others just don't and they may feel its a waiste of money. I map mine and others as I want what's best for the engine and this can only be seen on the dyno, if you don't dyno the bike you will never know how far out the AFR is, also it's when you will truly see flat spots etc etc. Depending on what you change with air flow in and out of an engine will determine how much change is required with fuel, bigger system bigger fuel. A PCV or Bazzaz etc is the only way of correcting the AFR on the CBR, if you had a Triumph or Ducati for example then the ECU can be mapped, and the mapping can be MUCH finer than a PCV, for example a PCV has ten throttle positions that can be mapped the standard Ducati ECU can have as many as your like! Downsides of PCV and Bazzaz are mainly they are piggy back systems so if they fail your bike stops! The other is cost! Cost of the PCV and then mapping, IF you choose to run a downloaded map then IMO you fall 200 quid from perfecting your AFR. This is all my view so by all means take my dribble with a pinch of salt Oh and one last thing if your man tells you they can map the bike by ECU reset ask them how this is possible with such a poor sensor? On the other hand the WIDEBAND sensor used by Autotune systems is fully capable of sensing the AFR of the bike accross the rev range this is the same sensor used on the dyno.
I'm with you Art ... cos at the weekends we all know you are really He knows what he's talking about Troy
I must get my tune up thingy fitted before next year . It's so long since I bought it I can't remember what it's called
Autotune? Well that's another long discussion too as the AT target AFR table can be set too all best AFR (13.2:1 I.e 13.2 parts air to 1 part fuel) or values that make best power, what you say? Well sadly best AFR does not make best power so it's not as simple as fitting AT and letting it do it's thing, however AT is a great bike of kit as it will trim your base AFR map and keep it in check all year round, if your dyno guy wanted he could work out the best target AFR values for AT to give best power however this means he has to earn his money! AND some can't be bothered Ha Ha, I did a whole write up on .net yonks ago about AT and how it works.. I love it..
Anytime, but I can talk all day, and I'm only a small operation so no big show rooms, however I do make tea Ha Ha. Back to the ECU reset, for those who doubt it ask about the sensor (the ONLY air and fuel sensor on the bike), ask about the fact the OEM ECU has no editable fuel tables, ask if this was the case why does no one offer mapping of the ECU like other manufactures, question them like I do, get told to sod off like I do Ha Ha.. I was told if someone can't fully explain something then it's likely they know nothing about what they are talking about, watch out for BSBB too!
Totally agree the autotune is top bit of kit although does require some time to create good maps, I fitted it to my bike in order to clear up a couple of fuelling stutters I was getting at motorway speeds or on longer stretches of road where throttle was being held at constant position holding set speeds. I was quite happy with the power delivery and feel I was getting from the downloaded base map bar the stutters, I highly recommend spending the time and adding the additional wires onto the PC5 in order to utilise a seperate map for each gear too and have the autotune tweak the individual gear maps as I had a couple of issues when trying to tune a single map to cover all six gears where the stutter had a tendency to move about in the rev range as the autotune tweaked the same values over and over again to correct the o2 values. Once I had the autotune working and tweaking 6 seperate maps it only took a few half day runs for all the stutters to completely vanish, well the worst stutters pretty much vanished within an hour of being out on the bike with me actively taking my time going up the revs and gears to allow the autotune the time to sample the gases and alter the maps as needed. I fully accept the autotune created maps may not produce as much total bhp as that which could be achieved by a good dyno tech in an afternoon. but I can honestly say I am totally happy with what it achieved and it also gave me a chance to tinker about some more with my bike to get it running the way I wanted.
I am right at the bottom of the learning curve with this pcv malarky but can hear a lot of senese being spoken here. I ran a rr8 with arrow slip on and no pc, it had a flat spot at 3k ish which was audibly annoying and made the bike feel like it was missing at speed limit speeds. When you gave it a thrashing it felt fine or so I thought. Fitted a full Arrow race system, race K&N and PCV with the map for that system. The bike feels so much better smoother, much more power across the rev range and it sounded right....(when you have tuned a lot of old carbed bikes without the benifit of the dyno you'd be surprised how close your ears can get you to the dyno's all seeing eye........once you've tuned in) However the bikes fuelling isn't perfect I can hear but not feel a few minor blips and stutters so reckon a full custom map by an expert is a no brainer at £200
Autotune is a great product but the name is a little misleading, people often assume that you install it, switch on and it maps your bike, well it does but not quite as simple as that. You will need an understanding of PCs and the PCV software, if your useless with these you will have a hard time. AT works by adding another fuel table to the PCV this table is the one that it creates based on what's being read from the sensor, the other is the base table (map) normally found in the PCV, AT has a target table too, this table is set with target AFR values that AT will try and keep too, in other words if your base map runs a little rich AT will look at its target AFR and then trim that value back to match its goal and store the result in the AT table, when AT is active (you can add a switch to turn it on and off) it will use the values stored in the AT table to fuel the bike it does this within a percentage of error, this is another value (default is 20%) that is there to protect the bike from damage in case the sensor was to fail, if it failed it could try and lean the bike 100% and damage the engine but the safety margin is in place to prevent this. One you understand this you can load a base map, run the bike and then hook up and view the Autotune table, you will see that if the base map is out all your trims will be maxed out, for example -20s and +20s for example, IF this is the case you would know your base map needs correction, at this point you have the option to accept the values, this then updates the base map, then you can ZERO the AT table and go ride again, next time you view the AT table you should see the values come down to within the percentage of error, remember it will not make changes greater than the percentage of error, you could change it to a higher value but not recommended! Once the AT table remains within the percentage of error the bike is mapped. However, take into account that AT will only map where it's been, so if you have not run the bike at full throttle it will not map it, this means if you wish to map top gear flat out and you only have access to a public road you have a problem! Also you could argue the AT is too late I.e it's mapped AFTER the bike has passed that zone, in other words your race off the line the bike gets mapped, it's not until you rerun that race you take advantage of the new values, so the bike will always benefit from a custom base map, this way with the AT switch you can run a HARD MAP as I call it and AT when you like, this way you can check up now and then to see if your base map has drifted out enough to warrant going back to dyno to map the bike for best power, as I say best AFR rarely makes best power, a leaner bike produces better peak power, however lean bikes are often peaky on the throttle and hard to ride fast as they are simply hard to deal with, a smooth bike is a fast bike, easy to ride and can be rode hard through turns etc without an unpredictable throttle. Hope that helps people understand AT.
This thread is prooving incredibly informative. I always wanted to know how the PC and AT work. So when talking about mapping for each gear, are we talking about the AT only, or does this need to be done with the PC as well. Surely the maps wouldn't just be for any gear? Excuse my ignorance on such matters. My blade is my only bike without carbs.
Sorry mate I don't quite get what your asking? The PCV can have a map for each gear, and a map for each cylinder if you wanted, so with 4 cyl bike with 6 gears you could end up with a whopping 24 fuel tables, each table has 10 cells across and a cel for each 250RPM over the whole rev range, that's a LOT of cells to map, AT mirrors each table/map with an AT table/map. The PCV gets gear info from the speed sensor.
I was asking if the maps as standard are done for each gear or just through the rev range and you only get the individual gear maps when you get custom mapping? Surely the bike to bike variables through 6 gears and 4 pots are massive for a standard one size fits all map? Mind you it's still probably closer than carbs lol
Well you say about carbs but they have spent years and years trying to get FI to mimic good carbs, I have a lot to do with FCR flat slide carbs and like to say they are a fuel atomising work of art! Yes the maps 99% of people get are a a single map! one map for all gears and all pots. You would have to talk to your dyno guys to get a price for anything outside of that. Mind you nothing wrong with a single map, it does the job far better than stock and is all most will even need, tbh bottom few gears lower to mid rev range is where mapping counts most and a single map is good enough for most of us, however as said adding fuel maps for each gear gets a far finer mapping and is about as good as it gets. For the record twin cylinder bike benefit massively from individual cylinder mapping as one throw out the other, tbh a single map is waisted on such bikes. In the case of AT for twins it has two sensors for each header and two AT tables, in complex race setups and factory ECUs they can run one sensor on each header, then another in the mid section and another in the final, that's a lot of data with intake air temp, intake air pressure, air box pressure and temp, engine temp, gear position, throttle position, wheel speed and so on, all that data real time at 320kmph needs some fast CPUs and cleaver maths, you could even factor in GPS track data and mapping for each corner of the track, hell I love those hi end systems would love to see that data!
That explains what I need to know nicely. I have been toying with the idea of a PCV for a while, but I don't like buying what I don't understand. I have a Ducati project with split single FCR carbs on. I'll be picking your brains on that when i'm ready to get her set up. I'll need some advice on where to go for sure, because carb setup seems to be a dying breed.
Normally a single fuel map is used in power commander(PC) devices, this single map makes changes to the signals going to the injectors either causing more fuel to enter the cylinders or less depending on what the map requests! The fuel map looks like a spreadsheet for all intense and purposes with multiple cells containing the fuel adjustment figures, the PC uses the throttle position to determin which cell is appropriate for the bikes current rpm. As the throttle position/RPM changes so does the current cell the PC looks for its adjustment figure. That's the way a PC uses a single map stored in its memory, now when using a fuel map for say each gear we now have 6 different tables with fuel adjustment figures on and the PC now also makes use of additional sensor taps to pick up what gear the bikes in. This gear data is then used to decide which of the 6 map tables the PC should be using to make the relevant fuel adjustment, the PC would first look at the sensor information for the current gear and depending on which gear is sensed Eg 3rd gear it would only reference the 3rd gear fuel table and use that table exactly the same way as it would if there was only one map installed again by using the bikes throttle sensor and bikes RPM to pick the fuel adjustment. It gets another level of complexity when it comes to adding the autotune as another set of 6 tables are created (only 1 extra table if using single fuel map) for the autotune to make adjustment to on the fly as it picks up the AFR from the exhaust sensor. These new trim tables that's created for autotune to use allow it to make changes to the stored fuel map/s indirectly so the fuel maps dont actually change until the autotune fuel table are merged into them by the end user accepting the autotuned trim value changes via the computer software. Hope that helps to clear up the way the PC works on an injection machine.
No problem mate, biggest problem with the FCR convention on the Ducati is the orientation of the carb, it effects the overall flood height and the way the carb functions, some of the Duc guys have made great progress with jetting and needle height etc with the FCR and air cooled motors, a few did not suss it and went back to CV carbs but well worth the time getting right IMO and something I would defo run if I had one!
