2007 AE to A Conversion

Well I was down the road at my buddies bike salvage yard and was looking over a wrecked 2004 fjr. Being that my 2007 FJR is the AE and this one was the A, I wanted to see if I could make it work. I bought the AE because I wanted the FJR, but the dealer only had the AE and gave me a great price... I would have preferred the A.

Anyway... I removed the lever and master cylinder from the handlebar, along with the hose, the slave cylinder and the foot shift linkage. I got back to my shop and successfully installed the clutch lever, master cylinder and hose using the existing slave cylinder. The speed sensor is next to the slave cylinder on the AE and makes it difficult to use a different slave cylinder. After bleeding the line, I was able to get full movement of the clutch.

Now the electrical part... The foot shift is live by wire to the shift actuator, so for the time being I left that alone as it would take modification to the foot shift to make it completely manual... I wasn't ready to do that until I confirmed that this could be a success. My next problem was that at key "on", the clutch actuator performed its typical check, although now it was not connected to the slave cylinder. Of course, it throws a SH_26 abnormal clutch movement detected. I looked over the wiring schematics in the service manual, but electrical, especially of this nature, is not my strong point. I located the two actuator sensors and attempted to disable them, but it didn't work. I imagine they are looking for a voltage from the actuator if it is not within their specs it throws the code. Anyone familiar with SH_26 will know that the bike will not start or shift with this code displayed. After awhile of tinkering around, I found that if you do a quick "key on, key off, key on" sequence, the MCU that controls the YCCS does not have enough time to reset itself and it bypasses the code throwing.

Voila! I have it on the centerstand and fire it up. I pull the clutch lever and engage first gear, no rear wheel spin (good thing!). I slowly let off the clutch and get wheel spin. Now I am thinking... is it really that easy? Of course not! So I go up through the gears, shifting with the clutch lever and foot switch. It throws a SH_46, speed sensor "engine speed and gear position sensor signal do not match while vehicle is driven". I was thinking this had more to with being on the centerstand and no load on the bike. So I drop it off the centerstand and take it for a ride...

Very nice, I have a clutch again! I cruise around for awhile and do something I haven't done with the FJR as the YCCS won't allow... coasting at speed with the clutch lever pulled in. I begin to downshift to neutral to see what happens... of course SH_46.

That is where I stopped, as it was getting late. I pulled the fuse to the YCCS, which disables the auto part of the electrical altogether. The bike ran in that state, but I had no shifting, as the foot switch was still operated by the shift actuator. I am confident the shifting would work with a shift linkage hooked to the foot shifter, completely bypassing the YCCS. The only problem I see is that the shift cam on the AE is N-1-2-3-4-5, whereas the A is 1-N-2-3-4-5. So I guess I could live with 5 up, 5 down shifting, as removing the shift cam would require a fair amount of work.

My goal is to have a manual bike that is completely bolt on with no stock AE hardware modified, in the event that I want AE back or if I sell it. I will let everyone know my progress...

Take care,

Dan

UPDATE ON POST #16!

Cool.

(posting to subscribe, because I want to see how this comes out)

Also, can someone with a 2006 or newer "A" model send me some pics of the left side of the bike near the foot shift. The salvage bike didn't have the bottom half of the engine case or anything.

I need to visualize my next move and would prefer pics. If you could, please email them to me at [email protected]

Thank you!

Dan

Sounds like you might want to see whether you can locate the ECU from an 'A' model.

I guess that the all up shiting will come naturally soon enough if you only ride the one bike.

Fred W said:

Cool.
(posting to subscribe, because I want to see how this comes out)

Click to expand...

Same here for the same reason.

RadioHowie said:

Fred W said:

Cool.
(posting to subscribe, because I want to see how this comes out)

Click to expand...

Same here for the same reason.

Click to expand...

Me, too!

The easiest way to see if a modification will work is to let someone else do it while I watch.

madmike2 said:

RadioHowie said:

Fred W said:

Cool.
(posting to subscribe, because I want to see how this comes out)

Click to expand...

Same here for the same reason.

Click to expand...

Me, too!

The easiest way to see if a modification will work is to let someone else do it while I watch.

Click to expand...

Like "cliff diving"?

So Dan,

You have an FJR also. You done modifying drives for C50s

RadioHowie said:

Fred W said:

Cool.
(posting to subscribe, because I want to see how this comes out)

Click to expand...

Same here for the same reason.

Click to expand...

+1

vol210 said:

So Dan,
You have an FJR also. You done modifying drives for C50s

Click to expand...

I'm still doing those when I get them... customers send them to me just about as fast as the salvage yards can get them.

Take care,

Dan

Well I was able to get it to work, however, the YCCS troubleshooting computer seems to smart for its own good. I believe a new MCU that doesn't have the YCCS would be in order to get rid of fault codes. I machined a new shift linkage, however, there is not a lot of good space for a properly leveraged linkage. I couldn't move the gear position sensor without disabling the bike and that is where the linkage would be on a manual bike. The shifting required too much pressure on the shifter due to bad geometry.

So yes, I was able to get it to work, however, there were always codes displayed on the screen.

Take care,

Dan

Thank god for threads like this one. Not like the "How Old Are You" or "Does Your Significant Other Ride?" threads. Those are SO ghey, I got a yeast infection just reading the damn things.

Or how about another thread on "How do you like your cruise control?"

johnny80s said:

Or how about another thread on "How do you like your cruise control?"

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Only interesting if it causes the bike to burst into flames.

Thanks for the write up, I've been pondering converting my bike to a manual shift but haven't had the time, parts, or money to do the swap.

Update:

So I haven't found an "A" model MCU yet, but I was making some adjustments to my "AE" and solved some of my complaints with the "AE".

1) My biggest complaint is the "AE" initial clutch engagement. It is typically clunky and aggravating, especially at low speeds... there are times that it doesn't seem like it knows what it wants to do, but most "AE" owners already know that.

2) The upshifts tend to feel lazy, not snappy like you can get with quick shifts of a manual. The downshifts also seem to be lazy and does not drop a gear quickly... there is a moment of clutch slippage. This would be the same as downshifting a manual and releasing the clutch very slowly. It is very difficult to downshift and match revs when the "AE" is being lazy.

The answer:

While in YCCS diagnostics on the digital display, you can adjust "SH66" to raise or lower clutch engagement RPMS. I have monkeyed around with this on more than several occasions and finally figured out the best setting. While in "SH66" mode, lower the RPM engagement all the way down until the green indicator light won't blink anymore. This allows for the lowest possible initial clutch engagement, which is approximately 1150 RPMS. Not only does this give you off idle throttle input, but I found that it also controls the clutch spring engagement rate. In other words, upshifts and downshifts occur the instant you shift and feels very firm without the laziness.

The other solution is adjusting the CO settings, which has been talked about numerous times on this forum. I orginally increased my CO settings +7 like most on the forums reported. But after making my above "SH66" adjustment, I still had off idle throttle stumble. I then increased the CO +2 for a total increase of +9 and it has absolutely cured my off idle stumble. It should be noted that my FJR is completely stock and my location is 584' above sea level.

Summary:

After making the above two adjustments, I feel that the "AE" is substantially better than delivered by Yamaha. The rideability is vastly improved and very predictable, which most "AE" owners complain the most about. I still don't have the full control that a manual would give me, but I am very happy with the results...

My next endeavour will be fabbing a shift linkage to replace the stock linkage in an effort to eliminate the clunk of the "AE" shift actuator... think dampeners inline with the linkage. Although the stock linkage already has that, it just sucks and doesn't work.

Take care,

Dan

Dhillis,

Doesn't that mean that the clutch will try to engage with no throttle when you are on fast idle?

Fred W said:

Dhillis,
Doesn't that mean that the clutch will try to engage with no throttle when you are on fast idle?

Click to expand...

No, the fast idle on the "AE" compensates for that, just like before. Basically the clutch engagement is raised in relation to high idle RPM.

Another note I forgot to add to my updated post is that my idle is at 900 RPM. Anything above that and my clutch would have a sticky disengagement... it had been that way since new and was not affected by this adjustment.

Take care,

Dan

RadioHowie said:

Thank god for threads like this one. Not like the "How Old Are You" or "Does Your Significant Other Ride?" threads. Those are SO ghey, I got a yeast infection just reading the damn things.

Click to expand...

What about if we combined these into a "How old were you when you first rode your significant other" thread?