What next for PCV?

[Cowcop]

I have had my Power Commander V installed and am extremely pleased with the result. I am running the DYNOJET Map for now with a 'stock' map that I can swith to. Throttle response, fuel consumption etc., are all improved. :yahoo:

My dilemma is that I have considered buying the AutoTune Module to add to this system, and I have come very close to buying Two Brother slip ons, but I have read soooo much on these mods, I have become confused in my old age. :dribble:

Some opinions suggest that the PCV with stock exhaust is just fine. Others say to add the slip ons, while others suggest that the PCV with stock exhaust is the best only with Auto Tune.

So... I want good fuel mileage, great power and no unbearable drone from my exhaust. 'Management' speaks to me about...what was that word....oh yeah, BUDGET, but has granted me a boon while telling me to proceed with caution.

So learned ones... What combo would you follow?

Thanks!

 

[Cowcop]

Other than HRZ sending me a note that he will buy my slip ons for $100 if I don't like them...nothing??

Someone out there must be running a PCV with stock mufflers while others will be touring with the Auto Tune with or without mufflers. I am trying to save my marraige AND learn something along the way.

Uselesspickles and associates....where are you??

 

[rushes]

You shoulda bought an 08...

Mine goes faster than I can ride it... Stock!!!

 

[UselessPickles]

The choice of stock exhaust vs slip-ons is a purely personal choice. There is no mind-blowing performance gain with slip-ons, so it's mostly a decision about sound and appearance.

Whether to go with the AutoTune depends on whether you think you might change the intake and/or exhaust of your bike in the future, and/or whether you want to put in the effort to learn how to use the AutoTune to customize the tune of your bike.

If you want to tweak the fueling of your bike to try to get a perfect balance of cruising efficiency and spirited smoothness/power for the way that YOU ride your bike, then you may enjoy an AutoTune. The AutoTune is not a magic solution, though. It's just a tool. You must fully learn how to use it if you want good results. It allows you to customize the fuel map of your bike in terms of air/fuel ratio (AFR). It's still your responsibility to understand what different AFR values do, when they are appropriate, and to determine which RPM/throttle combinations you want to set to different AFR values. Some sort of data logging is a must if you want to identify exactly which cells in the map you should lean out for cruising efficiency. You might be able to get away with determining cruising RPM ranges by observing your tach, but you also need to know the throttle position ranges for each RPM.

You also have to be prepared to deal with strange problems if you start messing around with things. I ran into a problem where just off-idle (right when starting to take off from a complete stop), my bike would want to stall. Thanks to the data logger, I found that the AFR Tuner was making that area excessively lean, even though I set it up to target something fairly rich for smoothness. I believe the RPMs are just too low at that point for the oxygen sensor to get accurate readings. I had to zero out the AFR map on several very low RPM cells to get rid of the problem.

Lucky for you, I've already done a lot of work coming up with AFR maps for my Motty AFR Tuner. You can't directly copy my maps into an AutoTune map because the Motty has more rows/columns (higher resolution), but you could manually copy over values in a similar pattern as a starting point: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoRFAfW0n9qydGRQcWRURkJsVUxnYWNTQUc5UVJwVVE&hl=en

That spreadsheet might be a bit out-dated. maybe I'll copy my current maps into it tonight.

 

[Cowcop]

Thanks for a detailed and clear answer to my meanderings. Clearly I am not in your league, and to 'learn' all the data for devices yada yada, I'll pass. As such, I have just filled out a requisition (triplicate) with 'management' and will purchase slip ons for the sound & weight benefits when she has reviewed my behaviour along my completion of assigned items from the 'honey do' list.

I will check your link tomorrow for your 'map' and I again thank you for this.

 

[Scottej]

The choice of stock exhaust vs slip-ons is a purely personal choice. There is no mind-blowing performance gain with slip-ons, so it's mostly a decision about sound and appearance.

Whether to go with the AutoTune depends on whether you think you might change the intake and/or exhaust of your bike in the future, and/or whether you want to put in the effort to learn how to use the AutoTune to customize the tune of your bike.

If you want to tweak the fueling of your bike to try to get a perfect balance of cruising efficiency and spirited smoothness/power for the way that YOU ride your bike, then you may enjoy an AutoTune. The AutoTune is not a magic solution, though. It's just a tool. You must fully learn how to use it if you want good results. It allows you to customize the fuel map of your bike in terms of air/fuel ratio (AFR). It's still your responsibility to understand what different AFR values do, when they are appropriate, and to determine which RPM/throttle combinations you want to set to different AFR values. Some sort of data logging is a must if you want to identify exactly which cells in the map you should lean out for cruising efficiency. You might be able to get away with determining cruising RPM ranges by observing your tach, but you also need to know the throttle position ranges for each RPM.

You also have to be prepared to deal with strange problems if you start messing around with things. I ran into a problem where just off-idle (right when starting to take off from a complete stop), my bike would want to stall. Thanks to the data logger, I found that the AFR Tuner was making that area excessively lean, even though I set it up to target something fairly rich for smoothness. I believe the RPMs are just too low at that point for the oxygen sensor to get accurate readings. I had to zero out the AFR map on several very low RPM cells to get rid of the problem.

Lucky for you, I've already done a lot of work coming up with AFR maps for my Motty AFR Tuner. You can't directly copy my maps into an AutoTune map because the Motty has more rows/columns (higher resolution), but you could manually copy over values in a similar pattern as a starting point: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoRFAfW0n9qydGRQcWRURkJsVUxnYWNTQUc5UVJwVVE&hl=en

That spreadsheet might be a bit out-dated. maybe I'll copy my current maps into it tonight.

Pickles,

The green area in your spreadsheet is approximately stoichiometric for pure gasoline/air mixture. But probably a bit leaner than stoichiometric for commercial fuel. Burning close to stoichiometric leads to very efficient combustion, and hot running. Do you have any concerns about the heat? For me these would be fairly high load (acceleration) bands, and I wonder if the super hot combustion is hard on the engine parts? What was your rationale for the RPM-throttle ranges where you use 14.7? I mean, what were you trying to achieve feel-wise? I'll probably transcribe your map (or your current one if you load it) into my PCV/AutoTune setup so I can see how it feels. The map provided by Fuel Moto improved my 06 very noticably. I have made a few fuel maps with the Auto Tune, but am still in trial and error mode. The Auto Tune trim maps look a bit scary to me sometimes - big positive and negative trims to the fuel table (plus or minus up to 18). But I have not done a long ride with the Auto Tune to get a really representative trim map. These trim numbers reflect hooning around town, then going flat out on the interstate for short stretches, etc. Enjoying watching it work though!

Cheers - Scott

 

[Cowcop]

OMG! There are only a few thousand words in the english language that stump me and "stoichiometric" is one! It is in the dictionary and I apologize to 'pickles' for the heady route this tread has taken..... lol

 

[Scottej]

Sorry Cowcop,

The thing I hate about the word "stoichiometry" is that I constantly forget how to spell it! Another way of looking at this is that when you take two substances that react together (like gasoline and air to make fire), there is an ideal ratio of the two that leads to the most complete reaction. So, take one atom of sodium (Na) and one atom of chlorine (Cl, put them together, and you get table salt (NaCl). A 1:1 ratio is stoichiometric. If you put five Na and one Cl, you will still only make one NaCl. That ratio is non-stoichometric. Anyway, the idea is that if you put pure gasoline and air together in a ratio of 14.7 parts air to 1 part gasoline by mass, all of the gasoline can be combusted. This leads to max efficiency, and also max heat in the cylinder. I think, although I am not sure, the reason most AFR values for modern fuel injected bikes are well below 14 is to reduce the load on the engine components. This is done by providing a slightly rich mixture. Because it is non-stoichiometric, it doesn't burn as hot, leading to less wear on the engine. Pickles, correct me if I am wrong about this.

 

[Cowcop]

Hey Scottej, I actually understood your explanation, but understand that I was just having fun with your choice of words! :yahoo:

 

[UselessPickles]

Pickles,

The green area in your spreadsheet is approximately stoichiometric for pure gasoline/air mixture. But probably a bit leaner than stoichiometric for commercial fuel. Burning close to stoichiometric leads to very efficient combustion, and hot running. Do you have any concerns about the heat? For me these would be fairly high load (acceleration) bands, and I wonder if the super hot combustion is hard on the engine parts? What was your rationale for the RPM-throttle ranges where you use 14.7? I mean, what were you trying to achieve feel-wise?

The green area of my economy map on that spreadsheet (notice that there are additional tabs at the bottom of the screen for other maps) is what I identified as my cruising area. This is based on lots of data logging at various speeds in whatever gears I tend to cruise in at those speeds (my Motty AFR Tuner has a built-in data logger). Yes, cruising around 70mph in 5th gear will actually require up to about 20% throttle, depending on wind, slight uphill sections, etc. My goal for that particular map was to create a map that sacrifices driveability for cruising fuel mileage. Some portions of that green area are also used during light acceleration, but the hard acceleration is mostly at higher throttle positions and/or RPMs.

I'm not concerned about higher combustion temps because this is intended for cruising. The stock FJR runs at 14.7:1 when cruising. The only flaw with this economy map is that it can't automatically switch to a non-economy map when I accelerate, so if I pass through that area of the map while accelerating, I get crappy throttle response, hesitation, etc., but I'm not concerned about long-term problems because that happens only briefly, and only with lighter acceleration. The stock FJR switches out of closed-loop mode and just uses a base fuel map and sensor adjustments for richer fueling when you aren't actually steadily cruising.

My solution was to have two separate AFR maps: one for economy, one for smoothness. I have a button to switch between them: https://www.fjrforum.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=123878

Unfortunately, you can't make use of the PCV map switch feature while AutoTune is being used, so you don't really have this option. What you could do, though, is run the bike with the economy AFR map and AutoTune for a while, accepting adjustments periodically to make sure the full adjustments are made (because there's limits to how big the values in the adjustment table can get), then save a copy of the resulting injector map. Repeat the procedure with the smoothness/power AFR map. Now you have an economy injection map and a smoothness injection map. Load those both into the PCV, disconnect the AutoTune, and setup a switch to switch between the two maps. You now have two custom-tuned maps that you can switch between, but they just won't be automatically adjusted any more as seasons change, etc.