| Author | Message | ||
     Khollister |
So I'm thinking I will probably go with the Special ops muffler, but also feel like I should use the Race ECM based on previous posts, Al's Exhaust Shootout report and the fact I will likely also tinker with the intake. My question is, what about the valve? Do I just disconnect the cable? Is there no check engine light because of the Race ECM? I'm a little puzzled Keith | ||
| Black_sunshine |
Odie's 12 pipes still utilized the interactive valve. Just plug and play. | ||
| Tommy_k |
I think what he's worried about is the fueling part...thus wanting to run the race ecm. There are a couple things you could do. 1.Disconnect the servo and wire valve open 2.Have Odie make a pipe for you from a 9 pipe w/o the valve 3.Keep your stock ecm and have it tuned with direct link. Keeps the valve working, and will run super smooth(what I did) Good Luck, I get compliments on my bike's sound all the time. TK | ||
| Brineusaf |
.Disconnect the servo and wire valve open I think I read somewhere that if you wire it open that you won't be getting the "top performance" of the bike. Correct me if I am wrong... but I think I read it somewhere of some importance. | ||
| Mramsey |
Hi Keith I run the configuration you are talking about. If you look inside the Odie 12 pipe you will see the inlet tube is very short and and dumps in to a big hollow sort of expansion chamber in the rear and the outlet ports are on the back end of this hollow chamber. It looks to me that the valve does very little as it is already a direct shot in to the chamber so I run it closed. For a while I actually controlled the valve with an rpm switch set to open it at a programmable rpm and could tell no difference when open. I am perfectly happy with the Odie 12 pipe valve closed, race ecm, K&N, and airbox opened a little. One more thing we recently made a trip to Deals Gap with the race ecm figuring fuel mileage would go down. First fill up was 66mpg and the second fill up was 69mpg which included to trip across the gap in second gear. Mark | ||
| Khollister |
Mark - thanks for the info. However, I'm really confused now. I sent the same question to Odie directly and got a reply stating that wiring the valve either closed or open on the 12 muffler will result in very poor performance (he said a customer tried it and couldn't get the bike over 110 MPH). He also suggested a 9 pipe, but I'm still waiting on someone in the know to offer up what the difference in the 9 & 12 pipe is other than the valve. I have no idea whether this is going to end up worse performance wise than the stock 12 pipe. My other option is a Drummer, but Kevin doesn't have any cores, and he is quite a bit more expensive as well. | ||
| Josh_cox |
The value of the valve is actually all in the midrange. If you lose the valve you will have a nasty midrange dip. The only way to get rid of the valve and the midrange dip is through some creative baffles that rob a litte on the top end, or a completely different header like the Micron system. Its all about trade offs. Buell put a lot of time into the valve system so we didnt have to make them. | ||
| Old_man |
I don't know for sure about the 12 race ecm, but I think I saw that it doesn't have the inter-active muffler control. If you decide to go with the race ECM, you would probably be better off with Odie's 9 muffler. | ||
| Jerseyguy |
I can't speak for the Special OPS but I can speak with authority on the Drummers. The conventional wisdom is Drummer, Race ECM, K&N and opened up airbox. Kevin told me to run the stock ECM this summer because he was having great success with it on the Drummer Race bike he's been campaigning. I've run the piss out of my bike with the stock ECM all summer with no problems and no perceived loss of power. Plugs are good, tailpipe color is dark grey to black. Go figure... | ||
| Murdoch |
I have the 12 Special Ops pipe, Swiss cheesed airbox & Race ECM. I also have a stock ECM I planned to get remapped when available but there seems to be a fair delay in a map being made & released. Soon as one is available I will get my stock ECM remapped with it so I can get the benefit of the valve operating. I love the Special ops pipe & cant wait to get the full advantage of it with the remapped stock ECM Cheers Murdoch | ||
| Khollister |
Well this all rather confusing & contradictory. If I could find a core, I'd get Kevin to make me a Drunner and slap a Race ECm in and forget about it. However, I have not had any luck, so far finding a 12 core, and Kevin has none. I really wish Al & company had not disabled the O2 sensor on the fueling runs so we would have some idea of the ECM's success in adapting via AFV. So, you guys running the Special OPS with the valve disabled + Race ECM - do you think the performance is the same, worse or better than stock? I have an 07 (which has a more open airbox and a supposedly different base map), so I'm tempted to put the pipe on and leave the stock ECM. While my local dyno guy doesn't tune Buell's, I could get him to do a few pulls to check the AFR. If it's lean, I could bail until Al gets his map done. This stinks - all I really wanted was a DrummerSS, Kevin's not sure when he will make more :-( And to further clarify - the reason I wanted the Drummer was not because I thought it was a lot better than Odie's, but because I had a fallback with the Race ECM due to not having a valve. The performance of Odie's pipe looks pretty good in the shootoff, I just know how to get close to an optimum AFR at this point. (Message edited by khollister on September 24, 2006) | ||
| Lenb |
Do yourself a favour and find yourself a pro-series factory race kit exhaust. If you can't find a new one I'm sure you'll be able to track one down secondhand. This is specifically designed to run with the race ecm and the combination really works! It's how I imagine Eric Buell intended these bikes to run if not for noise and emission laws. I fitted a (second-hand) factory race muffler to my XB12 and even with the stock ecm the difference is like between Clark Kent and Superman. The dyno charts I've seen show that while the stock, racekit, Drummer and Special Ops mufflers all give similar peak horsepower, it is the racekit muffler that gives the most torque and the most bang for your buck. You can really feel the huge midrange increase over stock - with full throttle it's hard to keep the front wheel down in 2nd now! btw - Those interactive valves don't do anything for performance - no matter what you may have heard or read. The race muffler hasn't got one and yet it kicks the stock muffler's arse anywhere in the rev range. (Message edited by lenb on September 25, 2006) | ||
| Kds1 |
Keith, I know when I'm going to make more SS's, I'm making them every day and night, it's slow when you do this by yourself, there's more than one person waiting for them also...If you want the SS call me and I'll put you down for one and when I get to your order I'll call you....it's as fast as one man can go.....if you send me your stock can I'll make you a regular Drummer alot faster.... Kevin www.kdfab.com | ||
| Khollister |
Kevin - sorry if I misunderstood the SS situation. I was actually in the dealership negotiating on buying the XB when you called, so I apologize if I misrepresented what you said due to my distraction. I'm trying to find a stock pipe, but no joy yet. There are a couple on Ebay I'll try for, although I'm going to be out of town and away from the net when one of them closes. Not willing to sideline my new baby to pull the original one :-) I'll give you a call and we can talk about the SS schedule again. Sorry about the mixup - totally my fault. Keith | ||
| Khollister |
OK - decision made. I'm getting a "regular" Drummer. Once I get some more miles on the bike (it's new), I'll run it down to my favorite dyno guy and get a few pulls with the stock ECM with the O2 sensor hooked up to see what the AFR is and settle this business about which ECM to use. If it's too lean to suit me, I'll throw a Race ECM on and call it quits. Thanks everybody for the info & opinions. And thanks to Kevin for hookin' me up - seems like a great guy & I hope to meet him someday soon. | ||
| Al_lighton |
There are a few things said in this thread that could use a bit of clarification. "wiring the valve either closed or open on the 12 muffler will result in very poor performance" I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I think it is more accurate to say that the special ops pipe will perform best if the servo is functional. I'll post a dyno plot tomorrow for a test that Terry just did that clarifies this somewhat. If you lose the valve you will have a nasty midrange dip. Part of that is what you define as midrange. One could say that the valve is a source of a midrange dip, depending upon the RPM and magnitude of the dip you're referring to. It definitely is responsible for a non-linearity in the torque curve, but the benefits it brings may be worth it. I really wish Al & company had not disabled the O2 sensor on the fueling runs so we would have some idea of the ECM's success in adapting via AFV. Not likely. The AFV is set with a few minutes of steady state operation across several RPM and throttle positions. Which way and how far the AFV will change relative to the nominal value of 100 is highly dependent upon the match between the fueling curve shape of the race or stock ECM for the muffler in question. If the fueling curve is well matched across the entire learn mode, then the AFV will settle to a consistent value independent of which RPM/throttle position the bike is operated in. Conversely, if the there is a large mismatch across the AFV learn mode RPM/throttle position map, the AFV will be all over the place depending upon where it last operated in learn mode. So what I'm saying here is that each bike, with each pipe, would have had to have been operated on each portion of the map for a while just to make a reasonable measurement of how well the bike learns at each RPM/throttle position. For the testing we did, we could have left the O2 sensors connected with absolutely no AFV change at all, for we never ran the bikes in Closed-loop-AFV-learn Mode long enough for the AFV to change. IT was all WOT pulls. I don't disagree that it would be nice to have a meaningful comparison of the adaptability of the maps to the different mufflers. But a test like that would take orders of magnitude longer than what we had to do the testing. Hopefully that all made sense. It did to me, but I've been breathing this stuff of late it seems. And on that note, Terry just wrapped up the special ops XB12 map on Friday. Just need to get it beta tested and then we'll be selling it. The XB12 drummer map is being beta tested now as well. We don't have an SS to map with yet, still need to find a local (near Vallejo) customer with one to map it with.} Al | ||
| Khollister |
Al - I thought about the adaptation time after I posted my comment. I will at least try to get some 25/50/75/100% throttle pulls done after I get the Drummer on and run for a while with the stock ECM to see what the AFR looks like. Keith | ||
| Jerseyguy |
Al - Everything you said makes perfect sense to me. To test every pipe in the closed loop mode would take a massive amount of time and the ambient conditions would invariably change day to day as well. All I can personally attest to is that the stock ECM seems to have the ability to learn the proper settings for a Drummer CF if given the road time to do so. Perhaps it modifies the AFV based on the O2 sensors readings to an offset that works for its algorithms. The 2 ECMs performed so similarly that I couldn't tell the difference. Granted, dyno runs might prove my seat of the pants opinion off a bit, but not by much. My current opinion is that ultimately the only meaningful difference between a trained stock ECM and a trained race ECM may end up being a more aggressive advance curve on the race. Honestly, I'm not 100% sure that what I've outlined is wholly correct. It's my opinion based on a summer of riding and real world testing of my XB12's performance in addition to Kevin's experience with our race bike. | ||
| Al_lighton |
Hopefully this plot that Terry did with the special ops pipe is readable enough. These are three wide open throttle pulls, after he had finished the WOT mapping for the servo operating normally. He did not remap for each plot.  The valve being held open (the green line for those of you that can see such things) does fine below 4k and above 6k, but definitely hurts the upper midrange. The valve disconnected from the servo (blue line) is great through the midrange, but is hurt below 4k or above 6K. The valve operated normally gives the best of both worlds, with the only real negative in the 3.5K-4K area. None of the above would cause a bike to not go above 110MPH. There was something else wrong in that case. Al (Message edited by al_lighton on September 26, 2006) |
