I think that boat has sailed. I want to know who the group is that Honda is listening to, because they are obviously clueless twits - instead of asking for calibration they asked for and got "separate wheelie control menu". A calibration interface will solve EVERYTHING that is a problem with this bike. The fact that this has never even entered into the Honda marketing or motorcycle media lexicon leads me to believe Honda is building and fine tuning bikes to please the Press and NOT the paying customers. For one thing we KNOW they are not tweaking the stock bike to please any race team, as ALL the successful Fireblade Teams (in NZ, OZ, Thailand, Brazil, EWC, JSB etc.) use either HRC ECU or series Spec ECU. Each of which ironically have as a central theme... you guessed it.... CALIBRATION! *** On a totally different tack, is it possible Rutter thinks of himself a bit of a Motorcycling Jeremy Clarksen and as a retired racer he fancies himself as a budding moto-journo and as such needs to have a long term theme to blag on - like Carksen hating American cars, Rutters thing will be blagging on the Fireblade year after year. Then when he thrashes the RC213-V round Ireland he gets to add "Much better sorted than the blade is" LOL
I have had various written and verbal communications with Honda UK since January of last year after ordering my 2018 SP2. Whilst I have no issue with staff competence, I strongly believe they are severely restrained (understandably) in what they can and can't relay to a consumer, and furthermore I am convinced that Honda UK abides by a business ethic of 'a customer is only a customer until the sale is made'. I base this assertion on the fact of my ignored requests to Honda UK (re Erion History) in the form of two emails and one written letter directed to Honda UK head office in Bracknell, and my unanswered two emails about the absence of fuel gauges on CBR1000RRs when a Super Cub has one. More relevant to this topic, the following question about the 2019 ECU was also ignored twice: "Is anyone pursuing this query for me please? 'Given that there are no updates "available" does that actually mean they do exist but are just not yet released for public consumption, OR, that they have not been manufactured with 'backwards compatibility'? If the latter is the case, can I purchase the 2019 ECU (through my local dealer of course) and will the dealer have the necessary expertise to install and re-program said ECU for my 2018 ('J) model CBR 1000RR SP2 as recorded on your data base?'" Crystal clear evidence of a corporation disregarding its client base. On the strength of this. I actually feel foolish by earlier announcing my interest in purchasing the proposed 2020 Fireblade.
Your experience is similar to what we experience when trying to interface with American Honda. Honda is tone deaf WRT to paying customers and you are only a priority before you pay. When I had the bike on order it was almost like they cared. I even got to meet and greet with a Regional Rep and was "assured about access to any and all resources once you have the bike in hand," this was 1 of a few SP2s after all - and remember, American Honda had a vested interest in the newly published sponsorship of the AMA MotoAmerica Honda racing effort. Or so they told me. Turns out even those guys where sold a bill of goods - and "direct and immediate access to HRC resources" really meant "Do you want us to ship your race kit or you going to pick up yourself?". Believe it or not, Ten Kate was a better and more accurate source of info for the MotoAmerica race team than HRC than American Honda was. Their questions regarding the HRC ECU went unanswered fro so long they resorted to buying a $30,000 Magneti Marelli setup to at least have some level of support. Of course that's when they found out the Italians just sent them right back to Ten Kate LOL
I don't think Michael Rutter meant pottering around on it. He probably meant riding it like a 1,000 cc sportsbike can be ridden - like the other bikes in the supersport class - you know the good ones - like Yamaha, Ducati, Aprilia BMW - those ones. I don't think Fast Bikes got on very well with it either. Further, I don't know who the fuck you are, but whoever you are you got no right to be calling Michael Rutter any kind of coward.
And back on topic: Here is the opening of the article. ****** ELECTRONIC ATONEMENT The 2017 Fireblade could have been a 21st century interpretation of Baba's original principles; instead it was an underdeveloped, recalcitrant liability that flicked TT stars at the scenery, Honda have reworked the erratic electronics for this year: does it finally deliver? +++++ This piece of writing displays a fundamental misunderstanding of and total lack of knowledge about the bike being written about yet is being presented as some sort of fact based thesis. It is a fluffy hack-job of pseudo-journalism. He lumps a purpose built race bike in with a stock street bike on incorrect tyres and somehow tries to tie the two together into a twisted expose story. The more I read and re-read the article I see how vacuous and shallow minded the bike press are. Now imagine how many stories we do NOT have in-depth subject matter knowledge about that we take on face value are actually utter tripe and hugely inaccurate and sensationally written just to bolster journos egos, suck up to manufacturers and sell magazines.
I assume English is your first language right? If so then you will note Michael Rutter himself said he was too scared to ride the Fireblade - means he called himself a coward - I didn't make the statement he did. It should be plain to see that Michael Rutter is full of nonsense with regard to his statement about the Fireblade. He is obviously not afraid or a coward, he just made a flippant controversial statement to explain what he felt - WHILE RIDING A BIKE WITH THE WRONG TYRE FITTED! I don't know who the you are but clearly you do not understand the issue at hand and how it was CAUSED by the very testers that then claimed the bike is shit. So - either they (including Mr Rutter) are stupid, incompetent or full of nonsense. Being they seem like smart fellas and are clearly not incompetent, they must be full of nonsense - Mr Rutter included,. Anyway, its been a fun Internet Argument but I gotta go off and do some stuff now - No winners or losers, just a bunch of grownups playing a modern version of "my dad can beat u your dad". LOL *edited for language*
There is pressure on journalists to not give bad reviews of products - and when someone bravely steps out of corporate line they get hammered, like they do not know what they are talking about - just like you have done - slag the journalist as if he doesn't know what he is doing, he can't ride - whatever. But that - slagging off the journalist doesn't work with Michael Rutter. Those videos I posted are just a sample. He took a stock GSX-R - with the indicators and reflectors still on it - road tyres - and thrashed it round the TT. He did the same with the Ducati V4 Rutter has taken every sportsbike and thrashed them round Donington. You can't just do a hatchet job on him - the bike is good and the journalist is shit - you might get away with that bullshit narrative with others, but not with Michael Rutter - that narrative doesn't work with Michael Rutter I am afraid. And he didn't say he was scared to ride it - but refused to ride it for fear of a crash.
This particular journalist does not know what he is talking about. He is both factually and anecdotally incorrect. Nothing he has stated about the behaviour of the bike appears to be based in honesty. He has not exposed anything. The SC77 has been on sale since early 2017. SP1 riders had been street & track riding their SP1s since the bikes launch - SP1s went on sale in the US in March/April 2017. A few friends told me they LOVED the SP1 on the road and could not wait to get on track. Then they reported on the disappointing track experience. Autoblipper issues, QS issues, TC issues. How odd?? What could the problem. Took me 1 phone call to Ten Kate to get the answer. Just 1. Nothing more. The answer was "There is no calibration interface, what tyre where your friends running on track?" 200/55 and 200/60. There was the source of the problem. Swap back to stock tyre size and all issues went away. Not hard at all - so why do Journos have to make up rubbish sensational stories just so they can slag off a bike? Ratings and sales. IOW they are un-trust worthy liars at worst, or poor researchers and sub-par journos at best. Now those of us with SP2s on order had been lead to believe by Honda that what was going to make it the "real deal" was access to the Calibration Interface. What Honda failed to disclose was that access to the Calibration Interface would be via the HRC ECU and that we would have to give up the ABS, Ohlins and street harness. This is why Ten Kate told me in August of 2017 to carefully evaluate my purchase decisions as they where confident that Honda would NEVER expose the calibration interface for the street bike and if I ever wanted to use the bike in a street capacity I may as well give up any aspirations of running the bike "in race trim" - without a Calibration Interface any tyre and sprocket changes would render the Total Control Torque Management System useless. If I as a civilian could get hold of this type of information with just a few phone calls and a couple buddies doing track tests in 2017, why is it that not a single Journalist has EVER honestly exposed the truth about the SC77 rather than simply written childish rants and half truths with sensational headlines? The reason the SC77 is an incomplete package is due to a lack of Calibration Interface. No need to dramatize anything else and if Mr Rutter (who I see fancies himself as a bit of a journo as well as a racer) just ran the bike with stock sized tyres he may figure this out as well. Now what does anything I wrote above have to do with the April 2018 shoot out test? Everything - there is no difference between the 2017 and 2018 bikes other than stickers. So if he felt this way in 2018 then he MUST also have felt that way about the 2017 bikes - right? What tyre size did Rutter run in that April 2018 test? I see Metzler sponsored the tyres. Did they remove the stock sticky OEM tyre and replace it with the same size Metzler? What size tyres where on the "stock" Gixxer or Duc he thrashed around the Island? Did they use available calibration interface to compensate for non-stock tyre sizes? See, again, we have some unknowns and some controversial statements by journos and racers turned wanna-be journos all of whom seem to have left out key details and background to the stories. I am trying get hold of electronic version of the April PB article to see exactly how open and transparent they are about the setup. Honestly, I don't care if the SC77 is the slowest bike out there, I just care that any information provided is honest and accurate. Semantics - he said he was skeeeered to fall off. Really? How so? Is he unable to ride an analog bike? Just ride around the Autoblipper and QS quirks by using the clutch. Select TC1 if on the SP2 and have Wheelie Control turned off and TC at its least intrusive. In fact, if you run a 200/50 and put it in TC1 mode the TC will never intervene, you can literally slide around like crazy - why no intervention? The bike never knows the wheel is sliding due to the incorrect sized tyre. Sorry, but Michael Rutter was full of nonsense and not being intellectually honest when he made that statement.
Save yourself the trouble, it wasn't an April 2018 test. That was the April 2018 picture in the 2018 calendar. Every month a different picture of a different bike that had been previously tested - Michael Rutter tested them all. If there were no issues then there would not have been the need to produce a 2019 upgrade - that is, incidentally, not backward compatible.
So when was the test conducted? What tyres where used? I believe you are now being what is called obtuse. We all know there are issues with the SC77. FFS man, entire threads have been discussed about the issue - teams of CBR riders have conducted literally HOURS of independent track tests on 3 different continents to confirm what we now know is the issue. (Ten Kate suspected it to be the issue in 2017) The issue is a lack of calibration interface to cater to different sized tyres and sprockets. IOW if a bike is run with a non-stock tyre size (as all the magazines insisted on doing) then you can and will invoke unpredictable behaviour from the Total Control Torque Management System. Adding a Wheelie Control Menu is NOT a calibration interface. Improving the TC response algorithm is NOT a calibration interface - I know, my updated 2019 HRC ECU includes the very same TC response algorithm changes, but they are still dependent on the calibration of tyre size and gearing being correctly set. The 2019 still does not have a calibration interface and as such the inherent issue is still there - and again, if you run with the correct tyres you get proper results. IOW, Performance Bikes are not validating a change to the electronics they are simply testing the bike under the correct conditions. The changes to the electronics where not made in the area they think they where. And if they go back and repeat the same tests under the same conditions they will - surprise surprise get the same positive results. And the 2019 bike uses the very same part number Throttle Body as the 2017 and 2018 bikes and the part is interchangeable between the models. So not sure how Honda claims it is a new part. PARTS SEARCH RESULTS ASSEMBLIES WHERE 16401-MKF-L21 IS USED 2017 CBR1000RA 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2017 CBR1000RA AC - THROTTLE BODY 2017 CBR1000RR 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2017 CBR1000RR AC - THROTTLE BODY 2017 CBR1000S1 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2017 CBR1000S2 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2018 CBR1000RA 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2018 CBR1000RA AC - THROTTLE BODY 2018 CBR1000RR 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2018 CBR1000RR AC - THROTTLE BODY 2018 CBR1000S1 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2019 CBR1000RA 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2019 CBR1000RA AC - THROTTLE BODY 2019 CBR1000RR 2AC - THROTTLE BODY 2019 CBR1000RR AC - THROTTLE BODY 2019 CBR1000S1 2AC - THROTTLE BODY
I believe I know someone that can forward this thread to him so he can read it. I welcome his input. Would be a bout time that a candid discussion be held about the con-job Honda pulled on us, as well as a candid discussion about the setup used for so many of the road/track/review tests.
Your arguments are inconsistent - claiming Rutter has retired and then in the same sentence acknowledging that he will be racing the RCV in Ireland - the North West 200 . Part 1 of Michael Rutter on the V4 Speciale - 987,029 views on the Tube. This is the guy that you think is full of s...
The only person confused here is you. You keep running to defend your hero Michael Rutter as if my comment somehow negates his entire career. He is full of nonsense regarding his comment of the SC77 CBR1000RR if his test rides where on a street bike with the wrong bloody tyres, because the SC77 has no calibration interface the wrong tyre will cause the bike to not work properly. - Not sure how else to explain his to you. But here are some questions: Do you own an SC77 Fireblade? yes/no? Do you understand how the SC77 Total Control Torque Management system works? yes/no? Have you spent HOURS conversing and debriefing with SC77 riders of all skill levels - from casual to club and regional to WSBK race teams to find out what happens when tyres of different sizes are used? yes/no? And finally - what does Michael Rutter YouTube view count have to do with how the SC77 Total Control Torque Management system works?
When was all of this technical information made available to the public, including those who ended up road testing it ? You make it sound as if all of this knowledge was provided to customers at the time of their purchase, when the bike first came out in 2017 - and was being road tested and reviewed. As if road testers and reviewers were all told about this from the start. I remember all of this unfolding as I was keen to replace my 2015 with the new model. There was no understanding of this issue, just testers finding there were "issues". Nobody told them about it, they were left to find out the hard way, and maybe some chose not to risk it. It seems to me there is a cover up going on, maybe to diffuse the chances of litigation. I have no doubt in Michael Rutter's integrity and ability to find any flaws in a sportsbike. I also believe that when the bike was first tested that these issues had not been made public. To think that road testers would have ignored such warnings, had they been given it, is absurd. I remember the first murmurings of there being a tyre issue were not until 2018 - on BikeSocial and even then it was only a theory. Honda never advised anyone of it when they bought their bikes. Link to video discussion when the tyre theory was first publicly discussed, as far as I am aware which was not until 2018 - Bennetts BikeSocial - :https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesoci...onda-fireblade-fuelling-problems-fixed-solved I think you have been very rude about Michael Rutter which is completely unjustified. Sadly I gave up on the idea of a new Fireblade to replace my 2015 model, and I own a 2019 model YZF-R1
All of this information was available to anyone with an inquiring mind and a telephone as early as August 2017. It was all WELL known all through 2018. Hell it states in the fuggen service manual that STOCK sized tyres need to be used to validate ANY TC,WC,ABS,QS or Autoblipper errors experienced. The manuals where printed in November 2016! I have had one since March 2017! I have been yelling, nay, SCREAMING about this online since early 2018. Ten Kate has been willing to tell anyone that asks since late 2017. There are NO excuses for fudged up test bike setups. None. Especially not during 2018. There was no theory. It was fact - and I was one of the folks that stated as such repeatedly but nobody would listen. I spoke to people in 2017 that had issues on track and when I asked about tyre size had them retry the same exercise with STOCK sizes and the issues went away. There is no and has NEVER been any mystery or conspiracy. There is frustration at a lack of Calibration Interface. Just ask the other riders on this very forum of the results they got with stock vs non-stock tyres. There is no cover up or mystery, there are just sensationalist just journos and morons that will not take the advice given. And yes, Moto Journos have routinely set the Fireblade up with non-stock tyres and then bitched about the performance. I have been very rude to Rutter? Uhm, he is a public celebrity and should be quite able to handle a little tough talk - he wears big boy leathers as far as I can tell. And again, if he tested the Fireblade with non-stock tyres and complained about the Total Control Torque Management not working properly then he is full of nonsense. Honda have stated clearly since day 1 that they will only support the performance of the street bike with STOCK sized tyres. This was never a secret - ever. Period.
So what did you tell Guy Martin then and John McGuinness ? why did you not tell Honda Racing if you had discussed it with Ten Kate - if you knew all this why did you not tell Honda Racing ? Ten Kate knew all about it all about it - but no one told Honda Racing - they had to throw people at the scenery Have you ever heard of Bennetts and watched that BikeSocial video or not - through their own experiences they come up with a theory which they discuss in the video. So how come Bennetts didn't know about it - you have heard of Bennetts ? or do you think they are full of s..t as well ? You are saying that the whole world knew about it already. All the Journos turned up and said no, we are not having this - change all the tyres to make sure that we crash or get weird feedback. You are being very loose with the dates about which these things were known 2017b drifts into 2018 ......by which time a lot of Fireblades had been sold. I have been taking an interest in this - I was there in 2017....
Are you being obtuse on purpose or are you just slow at comprehension? The Honda Racing UK bikes have NOTHING to do with the street bikes. They were both running HRC ECUs and the issues did not center around calibration issues (the HRC ECU has calibration front and center) and yes actually, Ten Kate and Honda and Honda Racing UK were in constant contact - but again the race bikes only shared frames, cylinder heads and throttle bodies with the street bike - nothing else. Yes - watched that video in March 2018 when it came out. The point both gents miss is nothing is a mystery. The TC behavior vs the ETV tables I have often published - FFS, the tables are on the first page of this thread here ---> https://www.1000rr.co.uk/threads/power-modes-what-do-you-ride-in.37361/ No - I am saying the whole world would not effing LISTEN to what was being said. I have been assisting people solve this issue this issue since late 2017. No - 2017 does NOT drift into 2018. US SP1 owners have been tracking their bikes since at least July 2017. I had my SP2 on order since March 2017 and have been in contact with SP1 track riders from day 1. Nothing here is new. What is new is that only now are people actually paying attention to what we have been saying since late 2017.... what have we been saying? We have been saying this: The street SC77 needs a Calibration Interface to allow for running the common track tyres and different aspect ratio street tyres without causing Total Control Torque Management issues.
