[danGTS]

Hi,

So, I have a car modding background and I have been successfully tuning my own (modded) car myself for ~10 years now. Well, I did blew an engine on my journey, but that was on a really specific "no luck" condition and is called ... experience. I'm using an APEX-i POWER FC FYI.

In any case, I now want to do the same with the bike. I know I can (safely) extract every little HP by tuning it myself. I find it nice that the GSXS 1000 has options with bolt-on maps. But, at the same time, I know that each bike will have different needs. I also expect that I will start doing some custom & less common power mods at one point, just like I did with the car. My non-professional personal tuning experience makes me really uncomfortable trusting blindly a map that I purchased and that has not even been specifically tuned for my bike. Not to mention a AFR can vary significantly for different weather conditions! I don't trust most tuners either, been there, done that, wasted money. Overall, self tuning seems the way to go for me. Now I have a justification to buy a wideband O2 sensor!

I naturally start looking at options to install an wideband O2 sensor on a bike. Browsing online, I am pretty stunned to find a little amount of people posting about their wideband setup on a motorcycle. Specifically, I have a hard time finding one that would fit a bike nicely, even more finding proper mounting hardware. It sounds like this will be a custom job.

Innovate is probably the first wideband company I would look into. MTX-L is their only water proof model I think. I didn't find any that would include a practical shift light, another of my project.

Anyone have any experience with this kind of product on a motorcycle or any O2 gauge setup to propose?

 

[bking1441]

I used MTX-L on my B-King, together with various interfaces to the ECU (ECU-editor first, later WRT).
Now I have the LogBox3 on my GSXS, but will get the Zeitronix ZT-3 Wideband Package.
I think this is *the* best option if you go the "self-tuner" route.
Still, I would say that the only way for a serious tune, is access to a dyno.
You will never achieve a serious remap, just "driving around" on public roads, reading logs, retune....repeat.
It is fun, and you will get better fueling... don't get me wrong, but if you are really serious about tuning for *full* power and best fueling in all (load) condition, nothing comes close to an experienced tuner and countless runs on a dyno.
I was close to 200HP with my "best-guess-effort" using logs - and a couple of runs on three occations hiring a dyno.
The guy who later bought my B-King went straight to an experienced tuner that got 215HP after many hours of tuning.
Same setup (Akra 4-1 full system, modified airbox, WRT reflash), but this was on a different dyno. So I probably was pretty near the max I could get on that bike.
The power curve was another story. Much better than I was able to tune.

 

[danGTS]

Hi bking!

Thanks for the info, looking into your suggestions browsing online..

BTW, I never said that I would not go on a dyno, and I did go on a dyno with my car before! Spent too much $$ on that machine! lol Of course a dyno is required to tune accurately. Much more precise than any other mean of measuring power/torque. The thing is, just like I did with my car before, I will be the tuner on the dyno, I just need to have access/rent the dyno and have a technician assist me to start/stop the dyno! Basically, more or less what you also did I believe. As you said, it's fun! I also feel safer this way since I know for sure what was changed and can track the changes.

I have seen before 2 cars with very similar mods needing very different Fuel map. To the point of being unsafe for the engine! Hence I am afraid of these "bolt on" maps.

I'd like to add on the usefulness of street tuning though. IMO, flattening the AFR on a dyno, etc is a waste of money. A lot can be done on the streets! Once the map is decent enough from the streets (i.e. linear AFR, ballpark AFR + timing), then tuning/optimizing the map on a dyno is a breeze. Takes much less time. I'd suggest this route no matter if a professional tuner is being used or not. Dyno time is expensive. However, one difference is I'm used to tune with a complete after-market standalone engine management. Flashing a stock ecu is different since one would expect a better/ more linear start point...

Also, keep in mind a dyno is not a real street/track condition! Street tuning should always be done, even if dyno tuning was performed. The temperature correction factors is just one factor that can easily completely throw off your dyno tuning, and even make it unsafe for your engine. Engine loads may be different as well, different gears, etc. So, both type of tuning is actually needed to achieve perfection.

In any case, all I'm saying here is, in my opinion, a wideband O2 sensor permanently installed at all time is not a luxury in terms of engine safety. I won't go on the dyno day 1, but at least my setup will be safe! I did not mean in terms of exploiting the engine to its full HP potential. Although there are some rule of thumbs and, over time, people will get to know what AFR this specific engine likes best.

Out of curiosity, what did you use to monitor equivalent hp or torque driving in the streets (if any)?

 

[bking1441]

Out of curiosity, what did you use to monitor equivalent hp or torque driving in the streets (if any)?

hehe... I used the logs to monitor the acceleration

 

[danGTS]

hehe... I used the logs to monitor the acceleration

Ok, as using "timestamp". Yeah, not much accuracy there and you can only make coarse tuning without precisely targeting specific loads/rpms. I understand better your earlier comment now. But it's better than nothing. I don't intend to do much of that.

Tuning Timing for each RPM/load is hard/impossible to get perfect without a dyno. Luckily, this is easy/quick to tune on a dyno. AFR is likely easy to get at 95%+ of the potential on the streets. Just by using general tuning background and knowledge from people who have tuned a K5 before. All in all, a decent street map should be possible to dyno tune (WOT) to almost perfection for a specific bike within an hour or 2 max. That's the good part!

What I'll be missing on this project is variable/tunable cam timing. I don't know why bikes don't appear to have that. There must be a reason. That part is more time consuming to tune. At least it'll save me lots of street/dyno tuning time ... and dyno $$$. Not sure it's good but.. :S

 

[danGTS]

Back to the original topic. I still, don't know how to hook a big a$$ round O2 gauge to this bike without making it ugly or drilling holes. It does not seem to belong there at all. Sux! But I want one!

Bking, how will you hook your Zeitronix ZT-3? Or do you plan on having an actual gauge that you can read "live", or just use the monitoring "black box" for data logging?

 

[bking1441]

If I will have a AFR-gauge (as I had on "The King"), it will probably be the little digital gauge on the "bare" curcuit board. And mount in a casing inside the cluster.

The logging using the timestamp is quite accurate.
I doublechecked that with my PerformanceBox doing a couple of 100-200 acceleration runs.
The "logged" result (15ms timestamps vs rpm/gear) was within 2-3 tenths with the PerformanceBox data.

 

[danGTS]

Ah ok, I see how you want to setup yours now! That's an option! Thanks!

By lack of accuracy, I simply meant that, no matter how accurate your timestamp is, it is still a metric much less precise than a dyno for tuning different parameters at every RPM/LOAD, etc. Just like you initially said basically! Even 0.1 second over a quarter mile (for example) is pretty significant, already more than most single ECU parameter changes would impact.

BTW, I used to monitor intake air flow for tuning of some of the ECU parameters (mostly VVT) .. That was pretty good for a street tune / base for a dyno tune.

But wait, are you estimating performance by calculating a specific time interval or are you measuring acceleration (g-force, which may be translated to "pseudo HP" graphes by your logger tool)? The latter may theoretically be useful after the speed is correlated to a RPM (easy calculation), but I'm not sure the g-force measurement of these tools has enough precision to do a decent job. I've never really done that sort of street tuning.