KTM and Tuneboy - Take Care

**boomer** · 30th July 2009, 18:26

my bike has more hp and akras..

check out My E-Peni

**Gremlin** · 30th July 2009, 18:47

Originally Posted by boomer

my bike has more hp and akras..

check out My E-Peni

is peni a little one? that would make sense

And you have 15,000km on a 2007 bike. Get out of this thread and go ride the bike ffs!

23,000km and mine is 10 months old

Not even my primary bike... hornet does most of the day to day work etc.

**Owl** · 31st July 2009, 07:17

Originally Posted by Gremlin

23,000km and mine is 10 months old

Not even my primary bike... hornet does most of the day to day work etc.

Good going there Gremlin!

Anyway, best of luck sorting that SD. I hope it all works out!

**Dooly** · 31st July 2009, 07:46

Originally Posted by Owl

Great to hear that Dooly! I thought with your background, you may be harder to please than most.

Maybe, but as I can do all mechanical myself I have no way to do the ECU and electronic thingys on bikes being a vehicle/car mech, so am quite happy to get an expert to set it up for me, so maybe in the future I can have a play with it if I get a cable for the ECU.
In all my years in the trade, have never seen a tradesman so dedicated and precise, and actually enjoying what he does. Plus being in the same game he gave me an indepth tech look at what the software does so it was quite interesting.
I said I wanted more grunt thru the rev range and more top end.
He took the Daytona on a test up to 260 and said it was still pulling hard.........now thats keeness on a test ride.

But also, so many people recommended him, and I did reading thru here from many comments about his work. So KB is actually a good resource to find out many things about people/business's in the bike field.

**lukemillar** · 31st July 2009, 08:50

Originally Posted by Owl

Yep fair enough Gremlin!

I was just curious about how well the TuneBoy would work with the KTM, as I know it varies widely between models and makes of bikes.

I've had TuneBoy hooked to my Speed Triple for the last couple of years and found it magic. Shitloads of maps available, but many of them crap, so eventually I had it custom tuned by TripleFourensics.

I couldn't be happier with the result!

Me too. I have a tuneboy for bothe my daytona and the Gas Gas. The Daytona one is sweet - loads of diagnostic stuff, error code reading and a lot of knowledge and tuneability (I made a new word)! The Gas Gas one however, is quite limited in that it can just load new fuel maps. Given that the bike is stock - I haven't changed a thing with it!

Do people know of any Tuneboy friendly dyno guys in the North Island? I know you can convert a PC3 map but I rather someone who knows the Tuneboy software.

Thanks
Luke

**icarve** · 31st July 2009, 11:18

Hey Gremlin I reckon the best solution for you is to fork out the extra $190 or wateva it is and buy your own cable to be able to hook up with your tuneboy key. Your key is for your bike and you can take it any where and I think once you own your own cable you can have it tuned by any good tuner and probably best to get on a dyno jet dyno and set it up as if you had a pc111 If its any help to you I chose a KTM map recommended on the Superduke forum for my bike and had it installed by Paul and Justin at Superior in Christchurch and it runs real strong right through especially on topend and when I had it on the dyno last week the fueling lokked real good except for a wee bit lean down the bottom. If you rang Paul he could get you the info for that map and I would bet it would work well in your sm too.

**Gremlin** · 31st July 2009, 18:31

It still doesn't avoid the issue that the KTM factory software cannot access the ECU to the full extent it could without the Tuneboy installed.

Its also not quite like a powercommander, which is a piggy back unit, intercepting the commands sent by the ECU, adjusting them, and forwarding them to the motor.

The tuneboy software looks to be accessing controls that the factory software mostly likely deliberately cannot change (ie, the factory software can see the settings, but cannot change them). I spent a bit of time in the shop discussing it today, its been a learning curve for us all, and more work next week

**Owl** · 31st July 2009, 18:53

Originally Posted by Dooly

I said I wanted more grunt thru the rev range and more top end.
He took the Daytona on a test up to 260 and said it was still pulling hard.........now thats keeness on a test ride.

Ha Ha, I can imagine! Daytona no problem, but Speedy needs a little rev limiter tweaking to achieve 260.

**Gremlin** · 31st July 2009, 19:08

Getting more technical (and hopefully I won't fuck it up

)
The stock map allows a reasonable change in settings adjustment, as stock it needs to cater for a massive range of riders. Chuck in a race/open map (as we did with mine) to accomodate pipes etc and the options and level of adjustment in the ecu narrows a lot. The reasoning behind this is that the map is already more finely tuned, and allowing people to mess with it too much could do harm to the bike, so to protect the bike, the factory software limits the adjustments available.

Tuneboy obviously doesn't have such restrictions (or desire to "protect" the bike) and hence change much more. Apparently the injectors for the cylinders should be around 0.95 (don't ask me what), yet one is at 0.93 (fine) and the other is 0.71 (somethings, but waaaaay out). Neither has a large enough adjustment range to bring them back to the same level... etc etc...

Part of the difficulty in bringing the bike back to "normal" is that the ktm software won't allow some stuff to be changed, so it will need to be normalised via the Tuneboy software. Also unknown is if the tuneboy is fudging the values the ktm software is reading, or they are genuine figures. If the Tuneboy is removed, will the values automatically return to what they should be, or won't they, as the ktm software won't allow their changing.

There is the potential for the Tuneboy software to actually be very useful, if the figures are a bit out from factory... but not at the penalty of being unable to use ktm software.

Interestingly, it appears that a full ECU factory reset will not work, as the Tuneboy software will still be present. Removing the Tuneboy software, and then doing a full factory reset should return the bike to normal, and then re-initialise it from there.

My head hurts

**Waihou Thumper** · 31st July 2009, 19:35

Originally Posted by boomer

leave it alone, stop tu tuing with it...

You got plenty there, why cause the grief? If the bike doesn't have the beans you want why buy it in the first place?
Tu-tu with it to a degree, but now look....

**Gremlin** · 31st July 2009, 19:43

Originally Posted by NZKTM

Tu-tu with it to a degree, but now look....

shush... hindsight is 20/20

At least everyone else is now more aware...

It was simply making it a bit better, pipes to free it up a bit, loss of weight, and the stock pipes ran extremely hot (couldn't even quickly touch them without burning yourself). Air filter sorta was a logical extension (I don't own stock bikes, have to make them my own).

The core of the problem (and behind all these issues) is that KTM makes the maps for the bikes. NZ fuel is different to the rest of the world, so using a European map here in NZ will make the bike run rich. This is a fact irrespective of bike. It was this richness I was trying to get rid of. While its real bad for a bike to run lean, its also not good for it to run rich (as in, it would make my eyes water on a cold start up, and the area smelt of gas).

Ironing it out, to make it run great (and long term, more reliable etc) has lead to this most exciting of adventures

Needless to say, this is just the engine mods... for the accessory list (non engine bits), lets just say the load on the alternator, load across auxiliary circuits etc, has all had to be calculated, to make sure they are within limitations...

**idleidolidyll** · 1st August 2009, 08:23

From what i've heard and seen on international KTM forums, all dealers in most countries including NZ have a similar diagnostic/control tool and it is definitely limited by factory restrictions. HOWEVER, rumour suggests there is one full race KTM diagnostic tool in the country that allows everything to be changed and that is owned by the importer. The word is that the RC8R is sent to importers WITH that tool instead of the standard one.

psst! Don't tell anyone but it may just be possible to get someone really close to the importer like Triple X in East Tamaki to go borrow it and tune your bike for SFA (I think a tune is about $150). The importer is about half a kilometre from the shop.

Of course Paul MIGHT lend that same tool to other KTM dealers if they request it from the importer to use with "race" bikes.

If enough people tell the dealers they are going to TuneBoy or PC3/5 their bikes instead of getting the dealers to tune them because the KTM tool is crap; the importer might just make the race tool more available.

**lukemillar** · 1st August 2009, 10:08

Ok, I may be wrong here, but I think you are over-estimating what the Tuneboy has done. I don't think the tuneboy installs any software onto the bikes ECU. I simply replaces the fuel map. From the Daytona, there are a few options to turn off various sensors if you are installing a full exhaust etc, but these are the same virtual switches that Triumph would use if you asked them to fit a full system for example.

Tuneboy software should come with your standard map anyway, so reverting to that should be easy as downloading the tune.

My advice would be to fire off an email to Wayne at Tuneboy (support@tuneboy.com.au) and I'm sure he'll be able to explain things/advise you on how to put things right. He is a decent guy and knows his stuff.

**Gremlin** · 1st August 2009, 17:25

Originally Posted by idleidolidyll

is owned by the importer. The word is that the RC8R is sent to importers WITH that tool instead of the standard one.

Interesting... I would imagine the race tool per se, does exist (makes sense) but heavily controlled access due to potential damage to bikes. Worth pursuing tho, so I will keep it in mind. I can confirm that the RC8R does require software beyond the current version of the factory tool, but has not been released to all dealers yet. It does have more features than the old version (well, the version dealers currently have) and is required to sort some issues on the bike, as the current version doesn't have the features needed. Training is still being organised etc, so that the dealers can understand how to use the software.

Originally Posted by lukemillar

My advice would be to fire off an email to Wayne at Tuneboy (support@tuneboy.com.au) and I'm sure he'll be able to explain things/advise you on how to put things right. He is a decent guy and knows his stuff.

Triple Zee has been handling this, and I freely admit I am well out of my technical depth here. The computer side of the stuff is fascinating tho

**Gremlin** · 18th August 2009, 17:06

Ok, time for an update...

Yesterday I had John from TripleZee and Wayne from Triple X and myself all at Triple X.

Process:

John plugs into bike and removes his custom map, loads Tuneboy's KTM normal map
Wayne plugs into bike and does a full ECU reset
Wayne loads KTM race/open map, approriate for the 990SM, with slip ons
Bike is put through the initialisation process again, ie, it needs to run at idle, with no touching, throttle movement etc for 10-15 min odd
Wayne has a bit of trouble getting live data from the bike, but looks like he can fully work with it
Gremlin is relieved... worse case scenario was possibly having the ECU clock up some air miles to Europe

One thing... Tuneboy is not "loaded" into the ECU, therefore, Tuneboy cannot be "removed" from the ECU either (this was the advice from Australia). We *suspect* that the custom map John did for me was what prevented the factory diagnostics from working properly. Also, Tuneboy takes the KTM normal map and alters it so it can work within their software. This caused us some doubts as to whether Wayne would be able to plug in... but from the process above, it seemed to go OK.

ie, John's custom map would have had values outside of the parameters considered acceptable by the KTM software, and therefore, it wouldn't do anything with the bike (inc loading a different map). If this is the case (and assuming Tuneboy can't do anything to work around this) it would mean you can't use Tuneboy and still be able to have the bike diagnosed via KTM software.

This is guess work however, so take the guessing and wild assumptions with a pinch of salt

Gremlin is reasonably happy tho. The bike sounds much better and smoother revving it through the rev range, and Wayne was able to see some values he didn't think were right. Once thats all sorted, and all my custom work, I should have Katie back by the weekend!

I guess if you have questions about your own bike, speak to the experts... I ain't one