Lot's on the ECU - it's pretty much at the forefront of work every day
Before I go there though, you touched on something that I've been meaning to come back to which is what should the upgrade path be for the stock CBR 125r owner who wants more power from their bike?
Ideally the upgrade path should look like this;
- Performance Pack less Clutch Springs
- Carbon Fiber Clutch Kit
- everything else.
This is for the person who plans to do incremental upgrades and it comes with a caveat. Installing the Performance Pack without the clutch springs is not wise when viewed from the long term perspective. This path should only be undertaken by folks who will be going into the clutch kit with certainty at a later date. This path changed when we brought out the Carbon Fiber clutch - with 433% more grip over the previous cork-based clutch it's pretty much the first, last and only clutch you will need - probably for the life of the bike! We've been beating it mercilessly and when you consider that our clutch springs probably add at least 300% more clamping force, and you couple that with 433% more grip from the Carbon Fiber clutch - that side of things is pretty well done - which is a real big issue for the CBR125r whether stock or racing.
The more power you add to the bike - the harder it is on the clutch. So these things should be addressed first and if a person wants to go no further then the Performance Pack and the Carbon Fiber Clutch Kit - cool beans - you'll have more power and more reliability for the rest of your days.
BUT, if you want to go further on the power path, with, let's say, either our camshaft or the ECU,
the foundation will all be in place to support that. This gets really important when you want to turn 12,500 RPM or run nitrous or what have you. But, I mean, just keeping it simple, why replace the clutch with anything less that we know will eventually slip? Do it once and do it right and be done with it.
Anyway, you asked about how the ECU is coming along - it's doing remarkably well. I've been running on it for probably about a month now (maybe longer) and it's made regular trips to neighboring towns etc. It's also making top speed test runs on a regular basis. I'm very close to breaking the ton and expect to do that some time this week. This is with our Performance Pack, Camshaft, aftermarket exhaust, Carbon Fiber Clutch Kit, and, of course, the ECU.
This is also with deeper gearing then stock. So the gearing is NOT designed for top speed runs - it's designed for good hole shots
'Highway' gearing will come in later when we hope to shatter the 200 KPH barrier (124 MPH).
So there's lots going on and I try to couple it with some fun high speed runs wherever possible to take a break from the intense CAD work and the logistics of ordering up components and parts etc. To highlight what I'm faced with, work on the ECU tends to fall into these categories;
- Individual Circuit Design
- CAD implementation of the overall circuit board design (including things like heat-sinking, fitment, power protection etc)
- Prototype Circuit Board Manufacturing (for fully functional pre-production test units)
- Parts/Component Ordering
- Prototype ECU assembly (it's all surface mount components, a dog's fleas are bigger then many of the components)
- Testing
- Re-design where needed
- Implementing Supported Features
- Test Riding
- Map creation/test riding/dyno testing etc
So it's a huge amount of work. I absolutely nailed the very first revision from a functionality standpoint. Literally, everything works and I'm doing all the testing on that first revision and this was a huge success! Even so, there are things that should have been done differently from an integration perspective and from a mass-production perspective. And so, revision 2.0 is under way. 2.0 is the big one, it should be the final (and only!) re-design and it's considerably more complex then 1.0, but after that,
it's done although it may need minor tweaking if/when it makes it to the factory for mass production although this is no big deal and other people can do that as all the hard work has been done
With a conventional 'piggy-back' ECU add-on, such as the Power Commander, this is all non-applicable because the only thing it can do is alter the air/fuel ratio.
This is a complete ECU replacement so it's an entirely new 16 bit computer. When you plug it in, it does not know how to start the bike! It knows nothing at all about what it's installed into. It doesn't know how many cylinders it has, how big the injectors are, what sensors it has, what the timing should be, where top dead center is - it's very much the same as building a new desktop computer with no operating system installed. You turn it on and it sits there
In the Power Commander world you create and air/fuel ratio map - that's it. With respect to this ECU - it's entirely open. EVERYTHING can be changed from the number of cylinders to the number of injectors, to the timing, to coolant fan control, to the rev limiter etc etc etc. It's wide-open. It's unlocked. It doesn't care if the engine is a big block Chevy or a 7 cubic inch CBR 125r
It's worth noting that Honda doesn't make their own ECU's. They are made for Honda by a team of engineers at a company called Keihin. They develop the entire 'operating system' for the bike - how it starts when cold, hot, how it idles, what the power curve looks like, the timing curve, the coolant fan operation, what the sensors do etc.
Given that the new ECU is a 'blank slate' I have to do all the same things!
Now don't go getting alarmed because when/if they go 'public' they will come fully loaded with the software configured. It's Plug 'N Play baby!
But the end user can alter
everything to suit their own specific needs.
So, there's hardware design, which is largely done, and then there's creating the software to run the bike, which is also largely done (I ride it all the time!) but it's a tough job. The Japs really know their stuff when it comes to the stock ECU. It is unreal, other then that it's locked and you can do nothing with it at all. I've had to design all my modifications to the bike around the stock ECU. This is very limiting. Once the ECU is open, you can then go back to making any change to the package (the bike) that you want - the ECU supports it all. Want to add a turbo? No problem, native support. Two-stage nitrous oxide injection? Native support. Clutchless upshifting? Native support. 200cc engine? Native support. Supercharger? Native support.
Making the bike run well when riding is easy. Making the bike start perfectly at all temperatures (cold start, hot start, warm start, cool start) this is where the men get separated from the boys
In OE configuration, no matter what the temperature, you stab the starter button once and the bike instantly fires up (I call it 'insta-start'). If it's cold it goes to 1650 RPM and decreases as the engine temperature increases. When it's hot it goes straight to 1450. These are the tough things to replicate. Typically this is done by a team of engineers at Keihin with decades of fuel injection experience. I have to have that same level of expertise. So hardware design is one thing, and it's a BIG thing, and then there's creating the software to run the bike properly so it remains a perfectly behaved bike that anyone can ride, at any temperature, and also go like snot.
A LOT of progress has been made on that front. Along the way, you start to see design issues with the engine in the bike that you would never see any other way. I found a 'reverberation' that makes operation at certain RPM's annoying. This is something that can be tuned out but you discover that this is part of the engine design and it needs to be addressed. You will never see that with any other system. It won't show on the dyno - unless you are a Keihin engineer or you have this ECU you'll never see it. They too had to design this out for the stock ECU.
I nailed down a perfect copy of the stock hot idle the other day (I've since improved on it greatly - the goal is not to replicate Keihin's work - it's to improve on every facet of it) and then took out the dB killer in the exhaust because it had a rusty bolt. The idle instantly changed and it had to be completely re-worked. That little dB killer had a
massive effect on the operation of the engine. I then took the bike out to re-tune the entire operation with the dB killer removed. I found out that the smoothness of the bike, at all operating ranges, increased by a factor of 10 (!!) It was like riding a brand new bike. Something as simple and as innocuous as a tiny dB killer had a massive detrimental effect to the operation of the bike all through the RPM range. The designers of the aftermarket exhaust did not know that. They could not see it. It would never show up on a dyno and they just added in the dB killer with no real understanding as to what it's actual effect was on the bike's operation. That alone underscores just how powerful this new ECU is. With it
you see everything and it's really, really surprising what you see!
So from a tuning perspective, or from the perspective of someone making 'performance' parts for these bikes it's a requirement. It's not optional. If the exhaust company had been able to see what that dB killer actually did they would have re-designed it (I hope) before releasing it as a product.
Earlier I mentioned that the goal is to not just replicate the OE fuel injection system, it's to improve on it. Last week I went for a trip through the mountains. One segment of the ride is a very steep climb to the apex of the mountain (8 kilometers above sea level) so it's a steep hill. Normally I fly up that aspect of the climb passing cars in the left lane. This time I was tuning the bike and was incredibly surprised to find that I could lug the bike up that steep hill 3 gears too high and the bike was as smooth as silk. It's one of the only times in my life that I sat in the right lane as if I were driving a moped. What's the point? The stock ECU cannot be lugged down by running 3 gears too high and still be smooth as silk. That was a huge, huge improvement over stock!
Keeping parts coming for this project is almost a full-time job in itself. Some of the components can't be sourced over here and have to come from China - they're not available anywhere else. So I tend to have to work 1 month ahead so that the one month lag time means no delays in the development. When I need the component, it's here
Support for the auxiliary devices is no small challenge either. I'm in the middle of sourcing a nitrous system and this really amounts to designing a nitrous system. That's no big deal but then it has to be installed at some point and tested
These days taking the bike apart (again) and installing new sub-components can get frustrating. The talk around the water cooler up here has been centered around how big the first nitrous shot should be and how big the second stage nitrous shot should be. This alone is quite revolutionary in it's own right.
From the outset, with respect to nitrous, I realized that the engine's small size (7 cubic inches!!) lends itself to very long lasting nitrous bottles. We sat down and roughed in the math the other night (very rough, just guessing based on previous nitrous experience) and we figured that with two 1.5 pound bottles (one on each side) for a total capacity of 3 pounds of nitrous, we would probably have enough to last for at least an entire tank of fuel, or,
about 200 kilometers of continuous nitrous boost!!!
In the real world you never run under boost 100% of the time. Perhaps not even 25% of the time. So what does this mean? It means that it's entirely possible that a single nitrous fill may last for no less then 4 tanks for fuel! That's a LOT of nitrous but it's due to the engine being only 7 cubic inches.
This lends itself to an entirely new concept, using nitrous as a regular part of your motorcycle's normal operation. The ECU supports full nitrous configuration, this means, you can set the timing to auto-retard under boost, you can set it up so that the first nitrous stage only comes on at a certain RPM and that second comes on at a different RPM and what the coolant temperature needs to be for it to be active (ie. won't come on if engine is cold) and also what throttle position the throttle needs to be in for the nitrous to come on. All of this configure ability, which comes out of the new replacement ECU, means that nitrous can be part of your daily drive. If you set it to only come on at certain throttle positions and RPM then it can be tuned to only come on when passing, for example.
The nearest analogy to this would be the current hybrid car. They run on battery and kick down to the engine when needed. Up until now, nitrous has been relegated to short term hits of the button where you go 'yahooo!' for about 10 seconds....what I'm talking about is nitrous as a regular part of the driving experience. But the talk around the water cooler so far has been should we use a 5 HP shot for for the first stage and a 10HP shot for the second stage or would it be better to run 5 and 5?
Another subsystem from the ECU is the 'quick shifter'. Quickshifter support is technology borrowed from MotoGP. It means that you can do wide open throttle clutch-less up-shifts. We sourced a Ducati quickshifter but found that it would not work so we have to source a different design. That's all been done, we just have to order it and....integrate it
None of these things are hard to do, and would normally be a joy, but when you're doing that plus working on the ECU design, plus managing parts order flows and designing new circuits while tuning the cold start of the bike while trying to break the ton in your spare time, it's work. More work
There's way, way more to this ECU then I've mentioned, most of it is confidential, but what I'll do at some point is split this post and re-title it and post up some teaser videos. Have you ever seen the CBR 125's ignition running at 25,000 RPM? I can show you that without letting too much of the cat out of the bag
Besides, it's a great way to highlight the importance of the revised ignition that comes with the Performance Pack. The Performance Pack's ignition will support some pretty amazing things and with the new ECU we can now actually show all of that with a short video. We can spool it right up to 25,000 RPM and you can watch the spark
We can change the dwell, in real-time, and you can watch how the thickness of the spark changes. You can see, in real-time, the effect of dwell changes to the spark. This is amazing stuff and every day I come up with new ideas to roll into the ECU
One of the ones that's been bandied about quite a bit is....remote start