Shane - Superlite (#43)

I finally got around to putting my bike on the dyno and did we get a surprise!!

Sunday I hooked up the trailer, loaded the bike up and got things ready to go visit Gary Pendleton. I swiped the mother inlaws Garmin because I wasn't exactly sure I'd find Gary's place without a little help and then watched some rugby.

Next morning I was up far too early for a Monday (I don't work Mondays, they're evil), into the car and off to McDonalds. Can't go anywhere without something greasy to keep my mind on the job. Even though a Sausage and Egg McMuffin combo with the Hash Brown stuffed in it and covered with Tomato Sauce is the only way to start the day a Boston Deli Bagel combo (with the Hash Brown stuffed in it but no Tomato Sauce cos it's got Bacon and Bacon should never, ever have Tomato Sauce on it) is good for a bit of variety and not that far off the Sauage and Egg McMuffin. Add caffeine and I was content and on the road.

I ignored the GPS unit until I turned off SH1 onto SH29 because I could gaurantee the stupid thing would want me to go a different way and I couldn't be bothered listening to it giving me crap directions and "recalculating..." every 2 minutes. The weather wasn't too bad, a little damp, but when I got to the Kaimai's it was terrible. Par for the course over that road though. On the other side the weather didn't improve so it was raining heavily and just very unpleasant all round.

I decided I'd take the directions that the GPS was giving even though I was sure it was taking me the most shit way possible. Turns out I was right. The GPS took me over Poripori Rd, Junction Rd and Mindin Rd. Goat track was a good description until it turned to dirt (or mud), at which point "farken shit route" best describes it.

On the bright side, it did actually get me to within 50m of the right address.

I rocked in and met Gary and we chatted a bit while we got the bike off the trailer (in the rain) and onto the dyno. He started getting things all hooked up and needed to strip back the plastic sheath around the wiring harness to get a pick up on the rev counter wire. I don't know if it was too early in the morning, not enough nicotine or something else but Gary neatly cut the kill switch wire in half!!

Lots of swearing ensued, during which he said he'd done that without cutting a wire hundreds of times over the years and this was the first time he'd ever cut a wire. I just stood back and quietly giggled to myself while he set about soldering it back together. I know exactly how easy it is to do and it always happens when you can't afford things to go wrong, ie in front of a customer, so I wasn't going to get pissed off over an accident.

After getting things all hooked up and set up he was ready to get a baseline.

Usually Gary tells everyone to piss off and leave him to work but he let me hang around so I stayed out of the way and just watched from a distance. After all, he's charging for the work, not to teach.

The first run was incomplete. Reason for that is things were leaning out too much so by about 11,500rpm the fuel/air ratio was well on it's way towards 15:1. Bad news, so Gary cut it early and couldn't get a baseline. Thing is, how long has it been running like that?? More than a year at least. I'm really surprised it hadn't eaten a hole through a piston and died miserably for the second time in it's life, especially as I had originally made sure I'd richened the mixture a bit on the fuel map that went into it just to make sure it wasn't going to go bang.

So the first thing he did was fiddle the Power Commander to get the fuel/air ratio down to something much less harmful, while I shot down the road and got 10 litres of petrol because I'd forgotten to fill the tank before taking the bike to him.

Extrapolating the earlier aborted run it looked like the bike would put out 59 horses, which was a tad higher than I had guessed but most certainly below almost everything else in F3. After Gary got it back within safety margins it came out at 65.55 horsepower. Holy crap.

Basically, the entire time I'd been riding the bike it was 6 horsepower down just because the fuel/air ratio was well out.

We lifted the petrol tank to adjust the idle a bit (so the bike was running of course) and when I put the tank down the bike suddenly started red lining. I hit the kill switch fast. We pulled the tank off and found the airbox had moved and was skewed, but that wasn't what had caused the problem. It looks like I put the tank down on top of the throttle body cam, basically winding the throttles wide open.

So we put the tank back on but then Gary spotted fuel leaking. Seems there was now a problem with the stupid quick connectors that Triumph used around that period.

Off with the petrol tank again and we have a good look at things, not finding anything obvious. So Gary digs around in the box of bits for the TT600 that he's wrecked for parts and swipes the O ring off the quick connector. I take and swap it for the one on mine and once I've got the other O ring off I find it had a tear in it. I'm guessing it must've gotten pinched when the fuel line was plugged back in.

After all that excitement (no more fuel leaks) Gary got into sorting the fuel map and after a few runs we ended up with a maximum of 67.4 horses. He said it was responding to the tuning really well compared to most bikes. Not sure why, but it is a Triumph and there's often hidden surprises in a Trumpy, you just have to figure out how to unlock them.

Because it'd gone so well Gary decided to have a quick look at the ignition curve as I'd suggested. The bike doesn't have the Power Commander Igntion Module on it and I've only got the software for fiddling the maps in the ECU so that was going to have to do. Not ideal because the default mapping is so coarse with intervals being 1500 instead of the much more accurate 500. It's possible to go to 250rpm intervals, but that sort of resolution is wasted on the slightly agricultural injection system on the TT600.

First we took 3 degrees out of the top 5000rpm ignition advance and did a run. Turns out this lost about one horse so we decided to go the other way and add 3 degrees.

After a couple of runs it was looking very promising so Gary redid the fuel/air map for max load, gaining about another 1.4 horsepower.

I'm happy. Anyone who isn't delighted with a 15% increase in power needs a really, good, hard kick in the crotch.

I'm sure with some careful attention to a few things and a bit more ignition curve tweaking we'd be able to get 70+ horsepower out of it without any problems, but for now I just want to ride the thing.

From the look of the graph it kicks on very nicely on the climb to max horsepower, dropping off rapidly after that. So Gary suggested I drop the rev limit by 400 rpm or so as I'm not gaining anything there other than wearing the engine out faster and I'm much better off in the curve before max horsepower rather than after. Sounds like perfect sense to me and doing that I know I've got a few revs in hand when I finally get around to having some engine work done.

I'm going to have to figure out how to ride it again though. With 59 horses I was able to lie the bike on top of my leg and dial up max throttle. Not anymore I think.

Can't wait until this coming Sunday when I get to have a ride. It'd better be fine!!