Hypermotard Project Update

I've owned the bike for almost exactly 4 months now, and just took my 2nd ride last night. I finally got the engine back together about 1.5 weeks ago, and found time for a quick spin last weekend, but was pretty gentle with it for reasons I'll explain below. Last night I got out for about 20 minutes, and this time I gave it some throttle.

But first some background - Stock Hypers make mid/high 70's in the HP department - 1078 cc's, but not much breathing room (2 valves, restrictive ports, massive catalyst, tiny airbox, 'relaxed' cam timing etc). My winter-stretching-into-spring project included installation of a set of Ducati Performance cams that I was given with the bike, along with a little mild porting on the heads while I had them off. I also installed a Leo Vince exhaust and a high-flow air filter to free things up on the way in and out of the combustion chamber.

The DP cam kit comes with an ecu that richens things up and eliminates the closed-loop EGO-sensor control strategy. I piggy-backed a PCIII on top of the ECU to allow further tweaking of A/F, and hooked up a data recorder to grab A/F, TPS, and engine speed.

My first ride was gentle as I had no idea where the A/F was, and didn't want to find out the hard way that it was lean - It turns out I had nothing to worry about. DP ECU's are famous for running massively rich, and this was no exception. Even with all the mods, I saw 11:1 and 12:1 readings at higher speed/load points. I did a little adjustment map and uploaded it to the PCIII, and rode with the updated calibration yesterday.

My first impressions are fairly positive. I'll dyno it eventually, but my seat of the pants estimate, backed up by other folks results, says I'm now making mid/high 90's.

But the real story is the torque - Massive torque. Anywhere from 2000 to the 8500 redline you get full thrust. Power wheelies are mandatory in 1st and 2nd gear, possible in 3rd under the right conditions.

My main complaints: 1) It's not terribly smooth - You can feel the individual power pulses distinctly under 4k when you throttle it, and 2) now that it breathes a bit it really needs another 1000 rpm of rev range. 8500 just doesn't feel like enough. Also, quite a bit of engine braking when the throttle is lifted - That slipper clutch is starting to look good.

I've really enjoyed working on this baby, and that's the important thing, right?

I'll post more as I progress.

Try topping out at 6800 RPM.....

I understand completely.... The torque kicks in on the Buell at about 3400 and just rips to redline which stops at 6800.

Which means midcorner (at times) one is always having to find an upshift....

I may bring the Buell to the track (ohhh my wife is going to kill me for saying that).

That's what you get when you buy a motorcycle with a diesel engine in it.

If you really don't like it I'll trade ya...

Nice job on the motor.
Think you can give a few pointers on how to play with the power commander stuff? Keep in mind I'm a slow learner...

Trust me I am not complaining..... the most fun bike I have ever ridden.

Since when did you become a closet mechanic? Sounds like you've been busy. Is this thing street legal? If so, we may need to plan a ride one of these days...

Closet?? I've always been very 'out' with my affinity for greasy metal bits.

I'm up for a ride just about any Sunday that it's not raining (or snowing).

Cool project, sounds like fun, and I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the bike.

Tweaking fuel with the Power Commander is pretty easy - Figuring out where to add/subtract fuel is the trick. I'm logging air/fuel, throttle position, and engine speed data with an Innovate LM-1 wideband a/f meter/data logger and using the data as a guide - I'll do a little writeup in a day or so.

Do it! if Dr Hall brings his Multi we'll have a quorum of air-cooled V-Twin battle cruisers.

I was too impatient (and frustrated) to take pictures during the cam installation/porting process - Which would have probably been the interesting part. But I do have a few pictures post-assembly and will post them. I haven't seen anyone selling larger airboxes - yet. I set the cam timing per the recommendations of a couple of supposedly expert Ducati tuners, and it's enough of a pain I probably won't mess with it if I get reasonable dyno numbers. My current setup doesn't give access to spark timing, unfortunately.

thats a lot of juice for a 2 valve air cooled twin, good work!

How can yo not love a guy who does all that after just one ride?

Those sound like some really exciting gains! I would like to get some more punch in the Multi. I am sure that some custom mapping on a PC, or equivilant would make a major difference alone (I have a full Sil Motor exhaust). Going to start looking into this later in the summer.

lus1: on the most fun bike I have ever ridden, Depo!

Oh, and, yeah...it's looking like I will be riding the Duc at Grattan.

I've seen your fiberglass expertise, but I didn't realize you were a grease monkey, too.

We need to drag Tom away from his happy little nest and hit N. Territorial than...

Here are a few pictures of my garage-fabricated steering damper setup. It's not going to win any awards, but it's functional.

Yes - the Ohlins sticker is upside down. The damper was an eBay find, from some sort of Aprilia setup.

The lower mount bracket is pretty rough, as it was my first experience with a mill, the upper 'arm' is considerably better.

Nice engineering...and machining.

Looks pretty trick!

What type of datalogger did you use for air/fuel sorting?

Ouch

In my defense, work+toddlers have kept me a little more occupied than I'd planned.

Evl-Twn: I came within a mouse-click of purchasing the same datalogger you have, but ultimately decided on the Innovate unit. It's a lot less sexy, but has a free-air calibration routine, which can be pretty important due to wide-band UEGOs propensity to 'drift' when run in rich conditions.

I'm pretty happy with the datalogger, but the included software is a little kludgy, and I've had sporadic issues getting a clean RPM signal via the inductive clamp.

Here's a screenshot of the speed/load map with A/F ratio data in each grid point. The color coding makes it pretty easy to read - Anything blueish is rich, anything yellowish is lean. I'm looking good at the higher speed/load points, and am intentionally leaner at lower speed/load points. I need to add some fuel in the 10-20% throttle / 5k-6k rpm area, and could still use some 'smoothing' elsewhere.

I'm learning that the biggest issue is adequately exercising the full speed/load range on public roads. I feel like a squid, constantly accelerating and decelerating, and even then I've missed quite a few key higher speed/load datapoints. I'd like to bring this to the track, but am not sure I'd be allowed to run around with this unit and a mass of wires bungeed to the seat.