| Author | Message | ||
     Tatsu |
I hear folks talking about rich or lean conditions for the bike. What is that and how do I know if I have this problem or not? I have a XB12R with, a drummer, box mod, race filter and race ECM and looking to gain a little bit more performance by getting the TFI unit. I was curious. Thanks | ||
| Fullpower |
run it wide open up a long steep hill, when you reach whichever rpm range you are concerned with thumb the stop switch to off, squeeze the clutch, coast to a stop, have a smoke, remove a spark plug, inspect the color. lily pure white is lean, dark brown is rich. beige/tan/cafe au lait color is good. oh, you have an XB, sorry, i said remove spark plugs. what i meant was, remove motorcycle, and then inspect the spark plugs. | ||
| Darthane |
LOL...Tatsu, find a dealership with a dyno - most of them have the capability to measure the A/F ratio of your bike's exhaust over the RPM range. It'll tell you if and where you're rich/lean. You'll have to get that done anyways if you want to squeeze any more power out using a TFI or anything similar. | ||
| Glitch |
What Darth said. I found a V-twin shop near me that will do dyno-runs for $30. I was more convenient and less expensive than the any dealership in my area. This way you'll know where in the RPM range you're running lean if you are. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Kudos to F&S Buell here in Dayton, OH. Dyno runs for $35, and that includes fuel air ratio. Have an appointment this afternoon for the 05 9 series stock ECM versus race ECM. Should be interesting. | ||
| Whitetrashxb |
Reep, will you let us know the results? thanx | ||
| Aaron |
Reep ... not sure you're aware of this, but F&S made an enormous contribution to the Team Elves effort the first two years we ran.  (a little hard to see, but it says "F&S Harley Davidson" just below the lower white stripe) Gary Stolzenburg of F&S sent me lots of parts I needed, and never charged us a dime. What's more, he loaned about $3000 worth of trick XR motor parts and let us use'em for 2 seasons. They made all the difference in the world. Support F&S whenever you can, they're good people, and we owe them. | ||
| Tatsu |
Okay I got it. Get a dyno run that has the ability to do a A/F ratio readout, then use the TFI to smooth those values out. Thanks for the input. | ||
| Blake |
When you are rich, pretty girls will follow you around. When you are lean, you can ride longer, go quicker in a drag race, and don't need suspenders to hold up your riding pants.  | ||
| Bomber |
plug chopping (well described by Fullpower, btw, thanks) works great on carbed/points motors, less well on carbed/electronic ignition motors, and less well on FI/electronic ignition motors -- it gets harder and harder to read the plug accurately, as the little black boxes try valiantly to correct for the lean/rich conditions (or so it has been explained to me) that said, Full's description was right on the money, but if you've never seen a plug out of a rich/lean motor, you'll have little context in which to place the knowledge gained from looking at yer plugs -- plug reading is just as much black are as science (according to the NKG and Chapion reps I've spoken to) -- don't ferget to sprinkle some squireely blood on the magnifying glass! dynos work great! | ||
| Reepicheep |
Aaron, Good to know. They have been good to me, and the owner of the place is the real deal, a grizzled old crotchety dirt tracker. Whitetrash... dyno in the knowledge vault http://www.badweatherbikers.com/cgibin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=3842&post=347045#POST 347045 I will let people that know more about this stuff then I speculate, but at this point, unless you are changing the exhuast, I don't think there is much reason to get the race ECM. |
