Hesitation/sputtering on cold take-offs

My "cold" running problems were at 65F or 18.3C. This is horribly cold for Pasadena, Calif in June and necessitates a mention in the news broadcast as does a sprinkling of rain, IE: STORMWATCH 2015!!!
With concerned looks from the weather lady. Somehow we survive....

With respect to all, when you have a bunch of bikes that are the same, all using the same map and one bike is not running the like the others, it's always the bike. I know folks don't wanna hear it when I say there's an issue with their bike. When I do, it's not some ego thing about the map, or some holier than thou attitude, it's simple statistics. There's a whole bunch of GRiSO's using maps I've built. If the bikes have no mechanical issues and are tuned correctly, there's no reason why a simple CO trim adjustment of +/- 1 or 2 (or even 3) shouldn't fix it. There should only be minor differences. If you have to go to +10, something is wrong. If there's a flat spot between 3k and 4k, something is wrong. If it has trouble starting, something is wrong. If it won't hit the rev limiter, something is wrong. If it pings, something is wrong.

Valves must be at 6 & 8 thou. Throttle bodies must be balanced. Air filter must be stock.

There's one drawback to running an open loop map. The ECU can't correct the fueling if something is a out of whack. The 8V is very sensitive to valve clearances and throttle body balance. With a closed loop map, if the valves are at 7 & 9, the ECU will try to trim the drama away. With an open loop map, your stuffed. So unless your willing to pony up for a wideband solution, you just have to make sure the bike is in tune. You don't need to be anal (like mine self), but you're not using your bike as a test bed (except tocino, he has to be anal).


So, I beseech you all to check your valves and TB balance. Make sure your TPS is right, and that you most definitely have reset the learned parameters.

[Ego on]BTW, I'm not saying any of my maps will lead to GRiSO Nirvana, but they're a damn sight better than the stock maps.[Ego off]

Mark

My bike IS running way way better than it did when I picked it up from the dealer to take home. I am learning the ins and outs of tuning the beast. I have the throttle balance routine down, now I need to do the valves, so far everything I have done has resulted in an improvement. Its a process to understand a new bike, but this bike is way easer to tune than my Buell or my Triumph.
Thanks for the patience to help make this bike the best it can be.

John

Yup, I second completely Mark's comments. This is why, when people have problems I always like to confirm the how and the why of how the service and tuning has been carried out and if during the process any anomalies have shown up.

The most important of these is any sudden change in valve clearance. On a healthy flat tappet bike I've never found a valve that needed more than the tiniest tweak after the first service. They tended to leave the factory set wide and if not corrected, (and let's be honest a lot of shops don't check the valves at the first, and often subsequent, services!) I reckon this could be another contributor to tappet failure. DLC will take any amount of sliding frictional abuse but impacts will cause it to shatter and de-laminate.

If the valves are checked and suddenly the gaps have opened up three or four thou alarm bells and klaxons should start to sound along with a big, red, flashing light. As the tappets and cam wear and degrade apart from the particulate matter it sends flushing through the delicate parts of the motor it affects both the lift and duration of the cam and therefore the valves. We KNOW how sensitive the 8V is to even the smallest changes to its ability to breathe and with an open loop map things will,go to hell in a handbasket really quick.

Another thing is that tappet failures often happen very shortly, or immediately even, after a full service has been performed. Since quite often people will remap at the same time as they do a full service it can, once again, be easy to assume that any sudden change in performance can be sheeted home to the map. This is why I always recommend that if things are behaving oddly they go back and re-check things. Even if the valves don't appear to have changed clearance if the tappets are beginning to fail it will alter the way the engine pumps and this will manifest itself in changed throttle body balance. If you know it was *Right* and then 20 miles later it's *Wrong* again? Well. It ain't the map sunshine!

Remember. You have to look at the whole engine and its management system HOLISTICALLY each and every part will have an overall effect on the whole. The trick is being able to identify which of the myriad of possibilities is causing the symptoms.

Pete

beetle wrote:

With respect to all, when you have a bunch of bikes that are the same, all using the same map and one bike is not running the like the others, it's always the bike. I know folks don't wanna hear it when I say there's an issue with their bike. When I do, it's not some ego thing about the map, or some holier than thou attitude, it's simple statistics. There's a whole bunch of GRiSO's using maps I've built. If the bikes have no mechanical issues and are tuned correctly, there's no reason why a simple CO trim adjustment of +/- 1 or 2 (or even 3) shouldn't fix it. There should only be minor differences. If you have to go to +10, something is wrong. If there's a flat spot between 3k and 4k, something is wrong. If it has trouble starting, something is wrong. If it won't hit the rev limiter, something is wrong. If it pings, something is wrong.

Valves must be at 6 & 8 thou. Throttle bodies must be balanced. Air filter must be stock.

There's one drawback to running an open loop map. The ECU can't correct the fueling if something is a out of whack. The 8V is very sensitive to valve clearances and throttle body balance. With a closed loop map, if the valves are at 7 & 9, the ECU will try to trim the drama away. With an open loop map, your stuffed. So unless your willing to pony up for a wideband solution, you just have to make sure the bike is in tune. You don't need to be anal (like mine self), but you're not using your bike as a test bed (except tocino, he has to be anal).


So, I beseech you all to check your valves and TB balance. Make sure your TPS is right, and that you most definitely have reset the learned parameters.

[Ego on]BTW, I'm not saying any of my maps will lead to GRiSO Nirvana, but they're a damn sight better than the stock maps.[Ego off]

Mark, as a newcomer to the GRiSO fraternity I have read the majority of the topics regarding fuelling and respect your forte and effort in map development. I've just received the recommended cabling and should soon be able to run a throttle body balance. You've been at this for a while so your maps should be very close to optimal - there's a lot of very grateful users out there.

I note the CO trim adjustment adjusts the injection duration across the entire rev range. Is it possible to address a specific rev range and amend the fuelling in that range on one of your maps ? You mention a wideband solution and I've read your recommendations in using an additional controller. Is your wideband solution a closed loop system that's active across the entire rev range and does the system provide a rev / throttle table showing a/f ratios ie how do we ACCURATELY determine the rev / throttle operating a/f ratios across the performance range and then make the required localised adjustments. Amending fuelling on spark plug colours and the seat - of - the pants dyno has got whiskers on it from my 59 year old - played with bikes and engines since I was 10 - point of view.

Lenz9753 wrote:

I note the CO trim adjustment adjusts the injection duration across the entire rev range. Is it possible to address a specific rev range and amend the fuelling in that range on one of your maps ?  

Not using the CO trim function. You must manually edit he map.

Quote :

You mention a wideband solution and I've read your recommendations in using an additional controller. Is your wideband solution a closed loop system that's active across the entire rev range

The wideband sensor operates across the entire rev range, but the ECU ignores the signal outside the area defined by its closed-loop parameters.

Quote :

and does the system provide a rev / throttle table showing a/f ratios

Only if you measure and log it.

Quote :

ie how do we ACCURATELY determine the rev / throttle operating a/f ratios across the performance range and then make the required localised adjustments.

As above. You must measure the AFR and log it, then edit the map accordingly. It's how I built the second generation of maps.

Quote :

 Amending fuelling on spark plug colours and the seat - of - the pants dyno has got whiskers on it from my 59 year old - played with bikes and engines since I was 10 - point of view.

. If you reckon I built the latest maps this way, think again.

The early maps were built that way and were a huge improvement over stock but as Mark discovered other means the process became far more exact with real time logging. It's now pretty damn exact and the results are astonishing.PETE

beetle wrote:

(except tocino, he has to be anal)

beetle wrote:

Quote :

does the system provide a rev / throttle table showing a/f ratios

Only if you measure and log it.

Quote :

ie how do we ACCURATELY determine the rev / throttle operating a/f ratios across the performance range and then make the required localised adjustments.

As above. You must measure the AFR and log it, then edit the map accordingly. It's how I built the second generation of maps.

Quote :

 Amending fuelling on spark plug colours and the seat - of - the pants dyno has got whiskers on it from my 59 year old - played with bikes and engines since I was 10 - point of view.

. If you reckon I built the latest maps this way, think again.

My questions were not intended to be critical of your work in any way. I am sorry if my zero knowledge questions could be interpreted as offensive

Setting the engine up identically as recommended should put my engine pretty close however the unknown variable is the Termi muffler.

I've deleted the cat, repacked the fiberglass "wool" / sound deadening and had to add additional fiberglass cloth to make up a shortfall in sound-deadening material, plus constructed a dB "killer" with an inside diameter at 51mm to match the ID of the exhaust collector at ~ 50mm - 52mm (there are restrictions in the Guzzi-manufactured collector upstream of the outlet)

(Previous experience with exhausts has shown me the importance of matching exhaust cross-sectional area to the area available at the exhaust valve seat plus sizing the collector correctly. The Termi muffler has a std outlet ID @ 58mm. At that diameter it's just a noisemaker and needs to match or be slightly smaller than the collector diameter due to the cooling of the exhaust gas during transit)

My intention was to set the engine as recommended, gratefully install the closest map you can recommend then fine tune the map to suit the "local" exhaust parameters. I can't see the point in bastardising one of your hard-won maps by fucking with it on my subjective performance assessment - I want to be able to make adjustments based on hard afr data.

Can you suggest how I should go about acquiring the post map install afr data please ?

Lenz9753 wrote:

My questions were not intended to be critical of your work in any way. I am sorry if my zero knowledge questions could be interpreted as offensive

WTF? Mate, at what point did you read where I took offense? I even put in a smiley. See this? ->  

Quote :

Setting the engine up identically as recommended should put my engine pretty close however the unknown variable is the Termi muffler.

Not really. I built a map for the Termi.

Quote :

I've deleted the cat, repacked the fiberglass "wool" / sound deadening and had to add additional fiberglass cloth to make up a shortfall in sound-deadening material, plus constructed a dB "killer" with an inside diameter at 51mm to match the ID of the exhaust collector at ~ 50mm - 52mm (there are restrictions in the Guzzi-manufactured collector upstream of the outlet)

IMO you'd have been better off buying a better pipe. The Termi is heavy and vibrates. Well, it did in stock form. Your mods will have changed it character I suspect.

Quote :

My intention was to set the engine as recommended, gratefully install the closest map you can recommend then fine tune the map to suit the "local" exhaust parameters. I can't see the point in bastardising one of your hard-won maps by fucking with it on my subjective performance assessment - I want to be able to make adjustments based on hard afr data.

Can you suggest how I should go about acquiring the post map install afr data please ?  
 

Well, you could start with the Termi map. It won't work with your mods, but I suppose it will do for a baseline. Or you could start from scratch. You'll need a wideband logging kit to record the AFR data. There are a few types available, it all depends on how much you want to spend and how you plan to log. You can get an all-in-one device or connect the wideband controller into the ECU like I do and log using a 3rd party app like ScanM5x.

What are your plans?

As per Petes recommendation, even though I found the CO trim minor adjustments were improving the hesitation issue, I checked my valves today. Its almost 10,000 Kms so why not.
Right side exhaust I could just put a .009 in there but tight, inlet was .007 and a loose .006
Left side basically the same. These are now back to 6 and 8. Seems like normal wear for 10,000kms?

The right side rocker cover had a good dose of mayo in it, thick and fluffy, not like the mayo in Australia used on burgers that is very runny (if yer from canada it seems really runny). The left side had none. I make a point to ride the snot out of it to keep that shit from building up but I also live in the rainforest so I am losing that battle it seems.

I have not re assembled everything yet to do balance, tps etc as during right side assembly one of the rocker cover bolts seemed to strip. Looks to me like a helicoil repair was done at factory and the coil has come out, this is the same side as the mayo. Anyways I need to do a repair there before I can everything back together and tuned.

This is a 2011 GRiSO SE, low kms as it pretty much sat in a garage for 2 years while I worked in the far north and now I live where I can actually ride.

Cheers for helping out with the advice/instructions and tips. Will follow up when I get er up n runnin.

beetle wrote:

IMO you'd have been better off buying a better pipe. The Termi is heavy and vibrates. Well, it did in stock form. Your mods will have changed it character I suspect.

Quote :

My intention was to set the engine as recommended, gratefully install the closest map you can recommend then fine tune the map to suit the "local" exhaust parameters. I can't see the point in bastardising one of your hard-won maps by fucking with it on my subjective performance assessment - I want to be able to make adjustments based on hard afr data.

Can you suggest how I should go about acquiring the post map install afr data please ?  
 

Well, you could start with the Termi map. It won't work with your mods, but I suppose it will do for a baseline. Or you could start from scratch. You'll need a wideband logging kit to record the AFR data. There are a few types available, it all depends on how much you want to spend and how you plan to log. You can get an all-in-one device or connect the wideband controller into the ECU like I do and log using a 3rd party app like ScanM5x.

What are your plans?

I agree with your assessment on the high probability of my "adjusted" Termi producing different flow properties compared to the stock unit - cat removal, flaring of the leading edge of the baffle, repacking the sound-deadening material, and resizing the muffler outlet should show positive outcomes towards optimal gas flow. Maybe not perfect but I'll work with what I've got.

So the plan of attack that I see - nothing cast in stone here - is install the closest map you can suggest and field test. If good then EVERYBODY IS HAPPY , if not good then the games begin.

I can pick through a wiring diagram but I'm not gonna bullshit anyone on my abilities to construct and master the tailored logging system you are using. One approach is probably to free a few moths from the seriously knotted money bag and invest in an all-in-one logging device / system then install and learn to run it ....... or we could have a chat about me sending said "amended Termi" to you if you are interested and we could work out a deal for a tailored map developed on your GRiSO ? Maybe PM me and see what we can work out ?

Right. I'll send you two maps to try. If neither one works well enough, we can go to plan 'B'.
I'm more than happy to build you a map using your Termi on my GRiSO. Send me a PM and we can discuss.

beetle wrote:

Right. I'll send you two maps to try. If neither one works well enough, we can go to plan 'B'.
I'm more than happy to build you a map using your Termi on my GRiSO.  Send me a PM and we can discuss.

Sounds like a plan - PM to follow