Shop report
of 8/14/2004
Michael Belcher and Chad of Dynojet made the trip to Seattle Saturday, 8/14/2004, and had my bike
on the dyno all day. The following is a quick write up of the events of the
day.
I rode
down to Renton, WA, about 20 minutes from my house, to meet up with the Dynojet guys. Since I was running a bit early I stopped at a local
Starbucks for a quick coffee. Two guys ahead of me in line walked out the
door after getting their drinks, looked at my bike, turned around and came
back in and asked me if I was Adam. They were Michael Belcher, Director of
Fuel Injection Development, and Chad, the designer of the PC (Powercommander)
unit. We went back to Bob Lanphere's,
http://www.rentonmotorcycles.com/, and proceeded to the Dyno room.
This
shop was quite nice! Even the Dynojet guys were impressed with the dyno
room. It was a professionally built room complete with high volume
ventilation and a state of the art dyno built by Dynojet. We mounted my bike
onto the dyno and I took the tail apart to expose the ECU and to removed the Techlusion FI device. Michael and Chad brought along about 10 of the PC
units and installed one into my bike and began testing.
Within
a few minutes they were able to reproduce the stalling I was experiencing.
The engine wouldn't stop completely, but would 'buck' and continue running.
They attached a scope to the wiring and started monitoring the FI pulses
coming out of the stock ECU and the PC. When the bike stalled they were able
to see that the stock ECU dropped a pulse and the PC just mirrored what it
saw and passed it along.
Over
the next few hours Chad tore apart many of the PC units he brought along.
Using a soldering iron he would remove various components and install
different resistors and such trying to determine the cause of the problem.
If they removed the PC the stock ECU worked fine, never dropping a pulse.
Put the PC back in line and the problem returned.
Finally
they were able to determine that <something> is up with the #3 injector. If
they had #1, #2 and #4 running through the PC but had #3 on the stock ECU
the problem went away. They were starting to wonder if there was a tolerance
issue with my ECU. They made a quick call back down to Las Vegas and found
the ECU's retail for $1000, and were $600 wholesale. We asked a passing
mechanic who had been interested in what we were doing if that was an item
they stocked. No luck. I had noticed that they had 5 ST's on the showroom
floor though and mention that fact to the mechanic. After a quick phone call
he gave me a nod and said, "go ahead and grab one out of a bike on the
showroom floor!"
I
walked all the way to the front of the showroom where they had the ST's on
display, grabbed an ABS model like mine and proceeded to walk it through the
showroom to the shop in the back of the facility. This showroom is supposed
to be the largest in the US at this time. Nobody said a thing as I pushed
the bike out the back door! :)
About 10 minutes later I had the back end of this new bike apart and the ECU
in my hands. Chad installed it into my bike and Michael fired it up. Same
problem, dropped pulse! I put the showroom bike back together and a shop boy
rolled it back to it's place on the showroom floor.
Next
Michael spied an FJR sitting in a shop bay next to the dyno. It had the tank
flipped up and the injector rail exposed. Another quick request to the
mechanic and we had the FJR over by my bike and ran leads from the wiring in
my bike over to one of the injectors in the FJR. The PC is design to provide
slight resistance back to the stock ECU, but far less load than an actual
injector. The thought was that maybe the stock ECU looks for a very specific
load from the injectors and drops the pulse if something doesn't look right.
We fired up my bike and began a test run. You could hear and feel to
injector on the FJR ticking away. Again my bike stalled!
By this
time both Michael and Chad were really scratching their heads. They've never
seen a bike behave quite this way. Because the problem is quite easy to
reproduce on my bike, and because the setup at Lanphere's is exceptional,
they'll probably be back in the near future to continue testing with my
bike. This time they'll bring a supply of ST1300 injectors to try and
simulate the stock condition to the ECU.
All in
all and interesting day! They agreed to fully refund my money for the PC and
provide a free unit when they get the problem resolved.
Adam