I know Fred very well and like him am not easily offended, hell my son flew to Qld and did some work experience with Freddo, Looks like he charges about the same as me. Folk do get hung up on numbers, the bike needs to run well. The easiest part of the whole mapping process is to get the WOT line on the map right,gets a good dyno graph, but as others have alluded to, it is not the be all and end all. One thing I have learned in over 22 years of dyno-tuning is remember to tune the BIKE not the dyno. Tune the bike to run how it should using your dyno/tools/data gathering, THEN measure the numbers. Surely a grand would have to include a PV license or some such.
Thanks heaps for all the input guys. I don't know if I mentioned it earlier but the stock 114 demo model I rode in the test ride had me grinning from ear to ear. I only took it out for about 15 minutes. I was happy with everything about it except for the sound of it (or lack of) with the stock pipes. The Breakout I was looking at had the Heavy Breather, Vance and Hines and tuner on it already. To me, it is an awesome bike as is but I'm curious to see what they are capable of with the stage kits.
Got my bike down to ProCycle Dyno today for Fred to work on after my Stage 4 Kit Upgrade. Got these numbers :)
Cant see it...
Max Horsepower = 116.90 at Engine RPM = 5.55
Great numbers, Fred is a magician, very clever man
Good advice Lushy. Pretty hard to spend four hours tuning a bike unless its a really tricky job.
On pure numbers 88/116 is seems a bit asthmatic for a 114 M8 Stage 1, BUT...not every dyno reads the same, comparing numbers from two different dynos, or even two different days is fruitless. It's a comparison tool, not a measuring tool.
The last M8 I did was a 107 Stage 1 tourer which went 90/110 on our dyno. Brand of pipe, headers, tuner, air cleaner, all kick in too.
A lot of basic dyno tunes just adjust the fuel maps and not the ignition, the good guys will find 2-3HP and 4-5ft/lb with ignition.
As Lushy says, its no use finding a big torque number if there's a hole in the torque curve. I love working with HDs on their tune after 30 years of doing 2Ts where the motor has to come apart to fix the curves...
Nice looking result there!
It's higher than what I've seen, but I use the Heartbreaker 5000 Mainline stuff and 4th gear pulls. It's all about the before/after as you said, and more importantly, the blacktop dyno :)
As good as PV and even SERT (to a degree) are, tuning a PC5 for fuel only is the dream, in and out everyone is smiling and for the usual stage 1 jigger. All done by smoko time :)
What I am interested to know from others in the game is their strategy for flash based tuning. Everyone seems to have their own method and ways to skin a cat. But I'm all about efficiency as I'm hiring the cell from the workshop. So I developed a small bit of software that you can punch in current AFR at that point in the map, user selectable target AFR's can be configured and it spits out a Delta to hit target AFR. It's been a huge time saver for myself especially in developing cruise parts of the map. You can have certain cells at stoich and others at 12:1 or whatever you choose so it's useful for tuning whatever engine in essence, hit the calculate delta button and hey presto you got some %'s to work with.
Don't know if there is a market out there, or a product that does this already. It took me not even an hour to write it.
But I'm interested to hear others techniques if they are willing to share.
Correct, my main focus is on hot rod sporties so have a good library of tunes from improved stock right through to hi comp 90ci 110hp ball tearers. Even so, the VE can vary enough that it warrants modification even though 2 bikes may have the engine and mods performed.
