[Bone Stockman]

Run V-Tune

Go inside, pour yourself a drink...disrobe...whatever. Open V-Tune. It'll ask for your starting calibration, which would be the tuning map you created. Then it'll ask you for the DataMaster file, which is the run you just recorded. Hit "Generate Tune", and when it asks you if you want to auto-extend, say "Yes". You may not want to auto-extend after this, depending on the data you collect (for instance, if you do a run that concentrates on a certain area), but since this is the first tune and you're dealing with fresh data on a canned map, go for it.

The screen will now show you two charts, front and rear cylinder VEs. In a perfect world, every cell on those charts will have numbers in them. Yours won't. Try as I might, there's just no way to get all of the cells without a dyno. Congratulations, you've just figured out why dyno tuners exist and what their relative worth is (a lot). What you want to see is white cells with a number. An empty cell means that no data was recorded. A yellow cell with a number means that you weren't there long enough for a reliable recording. A white cell with a number means that no changes need to be made to that VE. Any shade of pink or red means that changes are recommended to that cell.

Between the V-Tune Histogram and the V-Tune display you're looking at, you'll get a feel for how well your riding style worked for recording. One would hope that you've got a fair amount of cells that are either white or red~ish, and that there are few cells that are yellow or empty (and that they're off in the margins). Once again, in a departure from conventional wisdom, I suggest hitting the "accept tune" button.

I say that because you've hopefully at least gotten your cruise range recorded well, and that will help later on.

It'll prompt you to save the file. Were it me, I'd title it "081011tuning1". This is not your final map. Load it back into the bike, and get ready to do another V-Tune run.

Now that you've got an idea of how you've got to ride in order to collect data, go through that process again. It's here that I'll make a couple of suggestions regarding technique. For high-kPa areas, it helps to have a passenger. It also helps to have hills. One of the best things I've found is to get yourself a decent-sized incline and climb the thing as many times as you need, holding the bike at whatever your target rpm is. So you start off on level ground at 3000 rpm. As you climb the hill, keep the bike there by increasing the throttle opening. The MAP will rise as the load increases, which will fill in the higher-kPa cells. Once again, for your lower rpms, go a gear higher than you normally would. Yes, you really shouldn't make a habit of climbing hills at 1250rpm in 6th gear, but doing it once or twice won't break anything. Similarly, you're going to have to hold the bike at 5000, 5500, and 6000 rpms for a few minutes at a time. As long as your bike is properly maintained and working right, this won't hurt it.

You want to repeat this process going down the hills in a higher than normal gear in order to get the low-kPa, high-rpm cells. This is a huge departure from the 2009 and earlier bikes, as their horizontal axis is defined by throttle position rather than kPa. This makes tuning a Lambda bike much, much easier.

One area that you will probably have a bastard of a time filling in is the really, really low rpm areas. On the run you wish to address those cells, click on the "Table Selection" tab in MasterTune, select the "Idle RPM", and set your idle to 800. Crawl around a parking lot, then go climb a hill in a ridiculously high gear. On this run, you don't want to "Accept Tune". More on this in a second.... Once you've done this run, set your idle back to 1000 rpm before you load your next map. Your engine needs the higher idle rpm to maintain oil pressure.

As you repeat this process trying to fill in various cells, you may want to pull off the road and look at the V-Tune Histogram while you're collecting data so you can see the areas that you need to address. Just remember not to shut the bike off when you do this.

Repeat this process as many times as you need to in order to have your V-Tune display show you a bunch of happy white cells with numbers in them. Once you get a few good data runs under your belt and your VEs are stabilizing (no more bright red cells and very few yellows), you want to do something a little different when you generate your next tune.