[wolfy]

Originally Posted by motocamp

Intresesting thread!
.

You just made it so much more interesting!
Fabulous post motocamp!

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by Invader

How is the RD unit performing on your Classic 500? Can you share your overall review sofar?

It is performing flawlessly, no issues experienced so far. However, my riding has been extremely low over the last month or so as have been travelling on official work

I keep switching between Map 1, 2 and 3 and somehow always stick to the Map 3 for some reason

Originally Posted by ebonho

Did you find any significant improvement in the top end? How much have you timed your bike at (you can PM me if the forum rules do not allow a number)? Have you used a gun or GPS or are speeds speedo indicated?

I have done a 250kms ride little over a month ago and did try to see if the top whack has increased as i was riding on a 4 lane NH7....I didnt feel any difference as I kind of feel it has hit a wall at 115kmph and also due to the heavy wind and noise, i am unable to push it further.

Originally Posted by motocamp

A few of my customers have fitted race dynamics ECU.I have nothing against aftermarket ecu's or piggyback boxes but i thought i would share what I know as it is better to know the pros and cons of using these products.

RD seems to be a reasonably well made product, but as a somebody who has been around bikes for a bit I think there are a few more important things to consider.

Indeed an interesting write up. When you say "your customers" what would be your line of business?

[Racedynamics]

Originally Posted by motocamp

Intresesting thread!

A few of my customers have fitted race dynamics ECU.I have nothing against aftermarket ecu's or piggyback boxes but i thought i would share what I know as it is better to know the pros and cons of using these products.

RD seems to be a reasonably well made product, but as a somebody who has been around bikes for a bit I think there are a few more important things to consider.

The engine on most c5's will be very close to stock, so no real improvement in VE by way of increased cam lift or duartion, hi compression piston,larger valves etc.

For a real increase in hp we would really need to increase VE and rpm, please remember we are talking about a single cylinder motorcycle here with a very low peak rpm.

So in this case the only thing we can really play around with to increase hp marginally is to add more fuel by increasing pulse width of the injector.You can compare it to playing around with the jetting on your stock carb.

Hey Motocamp, for a given engine with the same hardware (VE) power and torque can be increased, with increased response, better feel, etc. but ofcourse within mechanical limitations. There are many dyno runs posted on this forum with 5% to 20% gains for a naturally aspirated stock engines with just adjustments in fuel and ignition.

Agree with you, for power/torque gains more than this, changes in VE, EGR, combustion chamber design, intake and exhaust lengths/dimensions are the way to go

Ofcourse change in igniton lead plays its part due to change in burn rate at diffrent throttle angles etc, you can call it housekeeping, its all to aid the most efficient burn to produce peak pressure at the right crank angle ATDC

I would think the guys at RD built custom maps for the c5 while running the bike on a dyno.

The problem with generic maps (read map 1,2,3 etc)is the maps they build might be bang on but are custom maps for the bike they ran on the dyno.Simply put the map is for a given setup at a given altitude and fuel,how good the tuner was plays a part too.

The base tune on the PowerTRONIC comes with 5 preset maps precisely for the same reason, with variation in fuel, ignition and response. The changes due to exhaust and/or filter on a stock engine are within the boundaries of these 5 maps.

Incidentally we have not dyno tuned the c5 as we do not have access to a 2w dyno yet (but something coming soon!), but calibration has been done on road with numerous bikes with different states of tune, locations and applications (procedure too lengthy for this thread) , the c5 being more of the tourer safe to say the standard maps have been tried and tested across the length and breadth of our country, and they works best with stock or close-to-stock c5s where modifications may mean an exhaust and/or filter.

I'm not sure if you are aware of these details, but PowerTRONIC ecus have compensation for throttle position, manifold pressure, engine temp, air temp, altitude, battery voltage to name a few..

Fully programmable unlocked systems are available for those who want to get more adventurous..

E.g the OE ecu on the C5 is mapped with stock air filter and exhaust, if one was to change the exhaust to say a goldstar it would have the effect of slightly improved Ve at a particular RPM where cylinder filling was improved due to reduced back pressure and improved scavenging effect.This would mean the increased air ingested by the engine would cause the bike to run lean at that particular rpm,vice versa it could also run rich at other rpms.running rich is definitely not good but running lean is far worse.Remeber the ecu is not really measuring the volume of air flowing through the engine its just looking at the data allready stored in maps for a particular sensor input.

This is a very real issue and is the reason companies like harley and triumph for e.g sell map upgrades for bolt on exhaust sytstems sold by them.It is also the reason a carburated bike needs to be jetted after a exhaust and airfilter upgrade.

If the motorycle is futher modified with after market exhaust system etc which is even more free flowing like a megaphone for example or vance and hines for harley,the only option is to fit something like a PC5 and download the map for your model of bike.

Remember how powerful or fast the bike feels is a very inacurate way to test, you need hard data to really tell you that your now fast feeling and probably loud bike is running dangerously lean at a particular rpm and is close to overheating and detonation, yes i know a lot of ecu's have knock sensing or look at CT and will retard igniton but then whats the point?there goes your hp gain.

Though a lot of people are running around with generic maps on there PC5's or in the Indian arena a RD ecu, these would be considered just a base map due to the obove mentioned reasons by most serious tuners, due to fact that the map might not be a perfect fit for your setup.

The only real way to get it spot on sadly is to setup your motorcycle with all the intended upgrades (or downgrades depends on how you look at it) like a air filter, exhaust,cams etc and use the loaded map to run it on the dyno and build a custom map for your particluar setup.This is done by looking at the AFR via a wideband lambda probe/sniffer inserted into the exhaust and checking how rich or lean it is through the rev range untill the bike comes on the limiter.

This way the tuner can see at what rpm the bike is running too rich or too lean and adjust the AFR by adding or reducing injector pulse width to give you a nice smooth power and torque curve with not too many spikes and hopefully a HP gain.

To sum it up, an aftermarket ecu which can be tuned or has different maps, is not really going to work perfectly due to the fact we have no way of testing which one is in the ballpark region of our engine requirements until dyno's are more accesible in india.

Another thing , running your bike on a test roller with no aerodynmic drag and claiming it does 25kph more than stock is a waste of time.

True, no two vehicles are alike, its best to individually custom tune a given engine with the given spec especially for changes such as camshaft, throttle body, etc. to extract the maximum potential, but at the same time you would be happy getting a safe 98% (if not 100%) of the achievable with a generic plug in, wouldn't you ?

[MCRPM]

Any recent feedback/usage observations that anyone has on the RD Powertronics ECUs for C500?

Any idea for how much are they selling it for these days ?

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by MCRPM

Any recent feedback/usage observations that anyone has on the RD Powertronics ECUs for C500?

I used it till about a couple of months back before selling the box as I was selling the bike itself

Never had any issues with the box and power delivery was significantly higher than stock and I enjoyed it during its entire ownership period

[MCRPM]

Originally Posted by mobike008

I used it till about a couple of months back before selling the box as I was selling the bike itself

Never had any issues with the box and power delivery was significantly higher than stock and I enjoyed it during its entire ownership period

Planning to get the following mods on my C500. What I am looking at is the RD Powertronics ECU + Red Rooster Performance Exhaust. The bike has currently done around 20+ K in total (In pretty good shape overall...)

Would this be a good way to go about ?

[outofthebox]

apologies in advance to OP for posting this here but does anyone know if this product has been discontinued or if the company has gone belly up?

I'm looking for one for my Classic 500 but I'm not getting any helpful response from their website/listed phone numbers since Dec 2014 despite having contacted them umpteen times.