RE the 07 FJR1300 surge investigation at Adventure Motorsports last week:
Unfortunately, we were unable to reproduce any of the reported surge effects while working with the service manager at Adventure and the Yamaha service representative.
Here are the particulars (though I’m not sure any of it is value added):
TruWrecks left his bike with Adventure Tuesday through Friday I believe; I dropped mine off Tuesday and they still have it.
Both the Yamaha Rep and the service manager wanted to follow a disciplined approach of 1) reproduce the symptoms on a stock customer bike, 2) isolate the problem, 3) diagnose, and 4) correction. The Rep had a package of instruments and test parts shipped in for the investigation; I don’t know much about it, but it did contain and barometric sensor which could be added to the bike(s). The strategy was to reproduce the symptoms, then add the instruments/parts and take data. We never got that far.
Wednesday’s results I’ve already posted (#112).
Thursday, the service manager and the Yamaha service rep. took both bikes up to the summit of Stevens Pass in the morning, and, again, could not induce a failure. They called me at work and asked me to come in. I did.
According to them, TruWrecks had reported the surging to be worse with weight in the topcase. We loaded an estimated 60lbs of engine parts in his topcase, and headed for the summit, the Yamaha rep on TruWreck’s bike, and I on mine. All the way up, the Rep tried various throttle manipulations—abruptly rolling on power, gradually rolling on, rolling on hard in turns, abruptly cutting, etc—and I rode a little more aggressively than I usually do, thinking that a quick atmospheric pressure change would enhance our chances. After reaching the summit without inducing any symptoms, we stopped and discussed the issue. The Rep asked me to call the shots. All I could think of was to try it again from the east side (less construction), and so we did, again, with negative results. At the summit, he notified me that he was out of time and had to head back. He could see I was exasperated, and assured me that “this was certainly not the end of it,” and that “sooner or later they’d get their hands on bike while it was exhibiting symptoms.”
I don’t know that anything was done Friday.
Saturday, I borrowed my bike back and made several runs at the summit.
1st run : Monroe (55ft msl) to Stevens Pass summit (4061ft msl) at steady 60mph.
2nd run: decsend from summit to Deception Falls rest area (1800ft msl) and return to summit at steady 60mph
3rd run: same as 2nd.
4th run: same again.
5th run : descend from summit to Skykomish (900ft msl) turn bike off for 20min, return to summit at steady 60mph.
On both the 1st and the 5th runs, the bike reproduced the symptoms: 1) surging during ascent, and 2) inability to load engine below about 4000rpm at the summit. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th runs, the bike ran well with no symptoms. I took the following notes on the surging:
1st run:
60mph steady ascent, locked throttle, speed drops to 53mph, the surges back to 60mph
60mph steady ascent, “ “ , “ “ “ 55mph, “ “ “ “ 60mph
60mph steady ascent, “ “ , “ “ “ 42mph, “ “ “ “ 60mph
60mph steady ascent, “ “ , “ “ “ 48mph, “ “ “ “ 60mph
(many more entries, these are representative).
At summit:
(all of this is in first gear)
Engine will not accept load on level ground at 1500rpm; engage clutch, engine dies.
Engine “ “ “ “ “ “ “ 2000rpm; “ “ “ “
Engine “ “ “ “ “ “ “ 3000rpm; “ “ “ “
Rev to about 4500rpm, slowly engage clutch trying to enter traffic, engine bogs down, going about 15mph downhill, must go to shoulder to let traffic past, bike bogs and surges abruptly for about 300 yards, speed picks up to about 25mph, suddenly full power, go to 2nd gear, at 45mph bike bogs, surges to full power, after about 4 miles downhill bike seems normal again.
The summit temp on Thurs was in the mid 70s; Saturday it was upper 50s to low 60s. The previous Saturday when I’d reproduced the symptoms, summit temp as 43, conditions: raining.
Extraneous data:
They pulled 3 error codes from my bike, none from TruWrecks. Mine were 19, 30, and 31.
30 is a rolloever cutout, which I assume occurred on Pikes Peak (see previous post) when I as squirting up the mountain in the mud, trying to keep the bike speed low, while needing to keep the engine speed high. I laid the bike in the mud a couple of times to keep from going over the edge. Codes had not been reset since then.
31 is a marginal oxy sensor, I believe.
19 is a mystery. I was told the only way to trigger it was cut power the ecu, then turn on the key. I never did that.
To this point, we've put more than 800miles on my bike investigating this, I believe more than 300 on TruWrecks.
Current plan:
My bike is still with Adventure. Chris wants to wait for a cooler day, then try Stevens Pass again. He’s also mentioned the possibility of rigging up a video/audio recorder to record symptoms. If they can get that arranged, I'll wire-up and ride up to Sunrise(6400ft msl) on the east side of Rainier, and see if I can get them a load of AV.
My frame of mind:
Exasperated. I had convinced them that the symptoms were easier to reproduce than they turned out to be (I really thought they were). Rep seemed to believe there is a problem. Just how seriously they’re taking it I can’t say, but he stressed the need to repro it. One of the things that brought him to the dealership was that we had 2 bikes, and Yamaha thought there was a high probability of reproducing the symptoms. Seems to me, this should be approach from both ends: customer bikes and complaints, AND the R&D end. I've gotta believe if MammaYamma wanted, the development teams could go over the 06 to 07 changes with microscopes and come up with some testable leads.
Conclusions:
Maybe temp plays a bigger role than I’d assumed.
This may take a long, long time to resolve at the rate things are going.
For the time being, I'm still going to work hard with the dealer and Yamaha. Though I cannot continue to do this forever.