Train's V-Tune Thread

[Bone Stockman]

But How Do I Know If I've Got Enough Timing?

Heh. Oh boy. Ready to pay for a tune yet?

The AKR will tell you when you've got too much timing. Nothing tells you when you don't have enough. You've got to go through and add timing, then do a data run to see if the AKR kicks in. Anecdotally I can tell you that you want to substantially increase timing in the idle range to keep the bike cooler. You also want more than the base calibration gives you at low rpm/low kPa settings.

At some point you'll reach diminishing returns. Make sure the AKR isn't kicking in. Resign yourself to the fact that you're not going to be able to get it much closer without either alienating your friends and family and losing your job. Or paying for a dyno tune.

Timing's Done! VEs Are Done! I've Adjusted Everything I Want to Adjust! Now What?

Are you sure? Got your throttle control where you want it? Got your Decel Enleanment set just so?

Create yourself a new tuning map and do one last monster V-Tune run. Run V-Tune and compare the results to your final map. Manually change (transfer the VEs to your existing map, don't create a new one) anything that sticks out like a sore thumb. If the VEs changed much (they shouldn't have), do another data run to look at timing. Assuming all's well....

Congratulations, you've just tuned your bike!

I've spent the better part of 4 months working on and off on this. My VEs are beautiful. With the exception of that horrific detonation event in my front cylinder around 2750rpm, my timing is sublime. But I've spent 4 months at this, when Dave spent 6 hours doing the Fatcat tune.

Yes, you can tune your bike yourself assuming you have the time and decent roads to work with. At some point I'll take the bike up to Bethlehem to see how I did, and what Dave can improve (and, of course, 'cause I love me some Dave, J, and Alex). But what this process has really taught me is how talented the top-tier tuners really are that can get better results in a matter of hours.