Alright Gents,
I had a bit of time so I took a stroll down to the old tuning shop in town. Turns out our ECU flash woes aren't just a matter of a lack of interest compared to other bikes, it's a bit more complicated than that.
So this is all explained to me from people at the shop who've been trying to tune these bikes for real, all this time.
The main trick for our bikes is Honda has now gone to a "two brain system." Basically we have two ECU's, one is the 38770-MKJ-A61 people are aware of and think is the only culprit, well there's another under the fuel tank kind of forward right if you look at the parts diagram. So with this new system, it was explained to me that more or less, one is controlling fuel/injectors and the other is controlling throttle bodies. My local shop has actually tried to tune bikes with this setup and they've never gotten it to work because we've really only had the common capacity to flash one ECU at a time. So you can flash the fueling ECU just fine, but then the throttle body ECU will say hey, this AFR isn't meeting emissions, let's open or close the throttle body to fix that since it no longer is controlling fuel the way it thought it was. so the two brains communicate constantly and it's kind of an infinite loop of tuning because one gets tuned, then the other starts to react and change how the bike runs, so then you need to change the other brain and now the first brain is no longer in sync because the newly tuned one is doing something totally different. One ECU is always undoing the work done to flash the other ECU.
This problem persists with the CBR1000RR-R as well, which Woolich told me today they're still working on. I'm confident with the CBR1000RR-R guys wanting a tune along with us wanting a tune, Woolich really wants to tune these damn bikes but Honda is making it super difficult.
Which brings me to my final point. The guy at the shop believes that Honda is looking to force in house tuning soon, similar to BMW and kind of like Ducati how the Akra exhaust for a Ducati comes with the tune in the price tag at the dealership etc etc. So like going to BMW and saying I want some M performance parts on my bike, Honda might be trying to do that too in the near future. Now, this is still a rumor and there's no real evidence of this coming other than the guys who open up these bikes for a living, seeing very similar things happening with Honda bikes that are existing with locked up bikes like the BMWs.
Moral of the story, keep on hoping and wishing that something comes along sooner than later. I'm sure the RR-R guys are helping us in our fight as well. This tune job won't be super simple so it still might be a while even though it already has been a while.
Enjoy your bikes everyone
I had a bit of time so I took a stroll down to the old tuning shop in town. Turns out our ECU flash woes aren't just a matter of a lack of interest compared to other bikes, it's a bit more complicated than that.
So this is all explained to me from people at the shop who've been trying to tune these bikes for real, all this time.
The main trick for our bikes is Honda has now gone to a "two brain system." Basically we have two ECU's, one is the 38770-MKJ-A61 people are aware of and think is the only culprit, well there's another under the fuel tank kind of forward right if you look at the parts diagram. So with this new system, it was explained to me that more or less, one is controlling fuel/injectors and the other is controlling throttle bodies. My local shop has actually tried to tune bikes with this setup and they've never gotten it to work because we've really only had the common capacity to flash one ECU at a time. So you can flash the fueling ECU just fine, but then the throttle body ECU will say hey, this AFR isn't meeting emissions, let's open or close the throttle body to fix that since it no longer is controlling fuel the way it thought it was. so the two brains communicate constantly and it's kind of an infinite loop of tuning because one gets tuned, then the other starts to react and change how the bike runs, so then you need to change the other brain and now the first brain is no longer in sync because the newly tuned one is doing something totally different. One ECU is always undoing the work done to flash the other ECU.
This problem persists with the CBR1000RR-R as well, which Woolich told me today they're still working on. I'm confident with the CBR1000RR-R guys wanting a tune along with us wanting a tune, Woolich really wants to tune these damn bikes but Honda is making it super difficult.
Which brings me to my final point. The guy at the shop believes that Honda is looking to force in house tuning soon, similar to BMW and kind of like Ducati how the Akra exhaust for a Ducati comes with the tune in the price tag at the dealership etc etc. So like going to BMW and saying I want some M performance parts on my bike, Honda might be trying to do that too in the near future. Now, this is still a rumor and there's no real evidence of this coming other than the guys who open up these bikes for a living, seeing very similar things happening with Honda bikes that are existing with locked up bikes like the BMWs.
Moral of the story, keep on hoping and wishing that something comes along sooner than later. I'm sure the RR-R guys are helping us in our fight as well. This tune job won't be super simple so it still might be a while even though it already has been a while.
Enjoy your bikes everyone
