All fired up

[Commuta_Busa]

So you wanna scare the crap out of some neighbors?


After a year of down time, searching the globe for bearings, dealing with delays, funding issues, my daughter's sweet16 party, my wife's graduation/party, going to a new project/client/site, and everything else that goes on in normal everyday life, last night I finally solved an electrical gremlin I had. After solving that I fueled the tank up to check my fuel lines and pressure only to discover a fuel line that had kinked and leaked like a 5 year old taking a pee. Luckily I had extra line so I quickly cut a new one, pressure tested it and installed the new line in my fuel system.

At 1:AM eastern time a small localized tremor was recorded in NJ! I fired my bike up and the growl rang out and rattled all of my neighbors. 20 seconds later I turned it off and quickly rolled it bake into my garage. My wife comes out holding the telephone out to me... it's my neighbor from down the street. Seems even in a dead sleep I was able to get him to jump outa bed thinking that something horrible was happening to his house or the area. I was threatened with a visit from the local pd if I ever pulled a stunt like that again (all in good humor). As soon as they stuck there heads out there window they noticed me rolling my bike back into my garage and new what the event was that caused there inability to a quiet rest.

I was threatened by my wife as well and a few other neighbors’ front lights were turned on briefly to assess the cause of the tremor. Shortly there after the lights were turned back off. A quick shower for me and right to bed to rest with a sigh of relief. lease:

Saturday is dyno day... time to get the tune right and do the final prep work for The Maxton Monster Mile

No pics, no dyno numbers, no results 'till after Sept. 30th. Cross your fingers 'n toes, we'll see how things go.

 

[Commuta_Busa]

I needed to share my "moment" with the hayabusa family There's nothing like the feeling when you get it fired up for the first time.

 

[Mr Bogus]

dont you just LOVE that last push to get a new race motor started Is especially nice when it works that first time

Congrats but the picture thing?

how about some detail on the fire breather?

 

[Commuta_Busa]

it really was a great feeling. fired right up no problems.
yea, yea... pics will be taken and posted later on
details... hmmm it's a fire breathing busa engine
Imagine your at a new job... you wanna know something, you've got to ask the right questions.

dont you just LOVE that last push to get a new race motor started Is especially nice when it works that first time

Congrats but the picture thing?

how about some detail on the fire breather?

 

[johnnycrash]

I needed to share my "moment" with the hayabusa family There's nothing like the feeling when you get it fired up for the first time.

+100!!!! For me, it's usually a mix of excitement that it's finally running mixed with the apprehension that comes with hoping it all holds together. Good luck - and lets see some pics!

 

[warp10]

good luck at maxon

 

[BigBSBusa]

Congrats!

 

[Commuta_Busa]

Thanks everyone.

My goal for Maxton is to break past 210mph. Seeing that my old engine (had >40k) mustered up a 207, I should be able to clipse it. I'll have to wait and see how my torque curve looks after the dyno time to predict things a little better. Even then it's not entirely in my hands.

 

[ToXSicK RoCKeT]

Very Nice Bro Congrats!!! I've never had the pleasure of lighting off a busa engine after a fresh rebuild, However if you got the same reaction from your neighbors as i did, firing my 468ci 675hp "UNCORKED" big block up at 12:30am ; i know what ya mean
Oh and like the rest

 

[Commuta_Busa]

my neighbors are still talking about that night. Most already knew that I had been working on my bike for a while and looking to fire it up soon. Most realized after being woken up that it was me and that I finally got the engine fired up. They also know that it's not the norm for me to pull a stunt like that so most just went back to sleep.

Pics and more info will be available next week...

 

[Mr Bogus]

Commuta, you starting to sound like the "Farmer Astronaut"

 

[Commuta_Busa]

Sorry I've been a bit slow in updated this thread. With everything that's gone on with Dave Owen I just haven't had that much time.

here's a temp unfinished pic

 

[Big Bo]

Very nice story. Congrats on getting the Busa fired up.

This reminds me of when I fired up my muscle car after 2100 hrs and knew everyone was asleep, but I just wanted to hear her run after being down for a couopleweeks.

 

[Commuta_Busa]

Saturday, Sept 20th was my dyno day. As mentioned earlier I only fired the bike up for the first time yesterday so it’l l be interesting to see how things go on the dyno. To be safe I just threw a map in the pc that was extremely fat/rich on fuel and I also took out some timing as well.

Early in the morning I loaded the trailer and grabbed a 5gallon can of fresh gas and headed to the shop. It’s only about an hour away and I’ve got plenty of time so I stopped at Dunken Donuts and picked up two dozen donuts and a “box of joe†for the crew at the shop. I haven’t been there in over a year so it’ll be a good chance to meet everyone again and introduce myself to some of their newer staff.

The shop is located in a short strip mall which consists mainly of their shop and then three other small shops. I never took notice of any of the other stores there but this morning I felt like it was a new discovery. Next to them is a hair salon, then a dry cleaner, and at the far end a Dunkin Donuts. All I could think was “oh great, these guys are probably so sick of D&D that they’re going to think it’s a big joke that I brought donutsâ€. Well, I was a bit surprised. I spoke to the store manager/co-owner and he said that the guys would really enjoy the food since it’s free and anything free always goes over big.

So I head to the back of the building with my bike on the trailer and start unloading it by their bay doors. As soon as I get it off the trailer my buddy Tommy (my dyno man) comes pulling around the back to park. He was a little surprised to see my bike the way it was. My bike was basically two mounted wheels and an engine bolted to the frame and a little CF pan on the sub frame. I haven’t sanded and mounted fairings yet. The only body piece on the bike was the undertail which I temporarily bugee’d to the sub frame. He looked my bike over and we both kinda laughed over its condition. “It’s been through some changes since last time.†was all I could say.

We fill my tank up with some gas and roll it into the dyno room. We strap my bike down and get things ready. The goal today is just to really work on getting a good idle and building the map for the top end. Since my bike was heading to Maxton for some top speed runs there wasn’t a high priority for the partial throttle mapping. If we had some time left we would work on it.

My bike fires up right away but doesn’t hold an idle well. It’s extremely rich so that’s the first thing we’ve got to trim out. The bike sounds like **** but that’ll be worked out. After some work trimming the fuel down and adding timing back in the engine is breathing good and idling well. In case some are wondering about break-in, yes we did some pulls before progressing to the tuning. If you’ve never heard a sidewinder exhaust close up in an enclosed space it’s hard to describe the db levels. Even with the air circulation system running (which is un godly loud), and the squirrel cages which blast a lot of air, the exhaust note is still very audible through my ear plugs.

Now that the engine is holding an idle we start pulling out a lot of fuel to try and get the co levels in a good area. Once your at -35 in your PC fuel map it just doesn’t have much effect anymore. It’s easy enough to fix this. I drop the fuel pressure back to somewhere near the OE setting and give it another go. Hmmm we’re still running to rich. Time to drop the fuel pressure some more. A lot of people run the Magnaflow or the Aeromotive fuel regulater. Mine is the larger of the Magnaflow regulators. Get this, you can only bottom out the fuel pressure to 30 some odd pounds. The smaller units let you drop it even lower if you needed to. So it seems we’ll have to play with the fuel pressure in the 30’s which I’m not real happy doing since atomization will suffer. Oh well, for right now it’ll have to do.

Back to the tuning again. It’s also time for another refill of the gas tank. 1.5 gallons of gas just doesn’t go far where you’re on the dyno. Now that the fuel pressure is low we’re at a good co level to start playing around. We start making a few pulls and the engine sounds good. It’s amazing how much better an engine sounds when you improve the tune. We’re not going far up the revs yet but Tommy has a confused look on his face. He turns the bike off and we look at the torque curve on the computer. Something is not right. At 7k the engine is only making about 70ft/lbs. We should be in the meat of the torque cure and there’s nothing there. Now I’m confused as well. The engine sounds good but just doesn’t have any power. We laser each header pipe to get some temp readings and they end up pretty consistent. Everything is firing right. Now it’s time to pull the plugs and check the compression. One by one the compression gauge is hooked up to each cylinder and the compression numbers tell us everything is nice and tight across all 4 cylinders. We’re both puzzled by all of these results. There’s no reason to keep tuning since something is wrong. I’m thinking about every scenario that would restrict the engine from making power and nothing seems to point to an answer. Tommy is looking at the computer monitor and starts laughing. Bewildered I asked what’s up. He makes a quick change in the computer with a few key strokes and what do ya’ know… my engine has some torque. Seems the software was set for something else and was calculating the torque incorrectly. With a sigh of relief we can start working on things again.

We add some more gas and continue. Everything is looking and sounding good. While the bike is idling on the dyno we both step out of the dyno room to talk about what we wanna do. The goal is not to get crazy and keep things on the rich / safe side of things and have a little extra fuel for the top end. All of a sudden there’s silence… my bike shuts down on its own. No biggie and we’re ready for some pulls. Tommy fires the bike and all it does is crank. The engine won’t fire! Oh crap. Since the whole engine is exposed it’s easy to see that there isn’t anything visually wrong with the engine. Tommy thinks it probably the fuse. Now I know that’s not the most likely solution with my fuel system. It’s a completely independent electrical harness with its own dedicated fuse and relay. A lot of guys who have installed aftermarket fuel pumps using the OE harness run into the problem of blowing the stock size fuse but for my system it’s not as likely. I check the fuse and it’s good. Maybe the relay went? Nope, that’s not it. Just to be sure we check all of the other fusses and they’re all good as well. So what’s going on? Well, a lot of people have complained about the ignition module from dynojet messing things up. Well, it’s worth a shot and we disconnect the unit from the coils. No luck. Crap forgot to disconnect it from the crank sensor. I hooked the OE connection back together and still nothing. It’s not getting any spark. Hmmm could it be the cam sensor? It is 6 years old so it’s a possibility. Tommy lives only about 15 minutes away so he drove home to grab the cam sensor off his newer busa. We swap out the sensor and still nothing. Ok what else could it be. Kickstand is up, tip over sensor is… tipped over! The sensor is dangling by its wires beneath my seat. Seems that from all the vibrations it decided to escape the zip tie. While holding it upright Tommy thumbs the starter button and the engine fires right up. What a relief. Since it wasn’t related to the ignition box we wire it back into the mix.

Now it’s time to get this going and make some pulls. After taping the tip over sensor so it can’t escape again we fire up the bike. In about 15 seconds time both Tommy and I are gagging on exhaust fumes. Seems in our haste we didn’t turn the air circulation system back on. Hit the big green button and almost instantly the air in the dyno room is clean again.

We’ve made some good pulls and a lot of the staff and customers in the shop start really wondering what all the noise is. We’ve only played up to 80% throttle and it’s time to go for some full throttle runs. It’s time to run it up to the redline and see where the cams fall off. I’m standing outside the dyno room for this one because I don’t want be in the room for this. Standing outside the dyno room which has sound absorbing wall material and a big thick lexan window I can still hear the rumbling of the engine pretty good. As the revs climb up I can feel the concrete floor beginning to rumble under my feet. My heart rate climbs similar to the revs of the engine. At 12k the engine is at full song. You can see the walls vibrating or maybe it was just me. Well now we know where the cams fall and we don’t need to take it all the way to the redline any more. In the future I’ll have to play with the cam timming so the engine peaks a little later but for right now there’s no time for changes.

 

[Commuta_Busa]

Another fill up of gas and we’re now down to the last one and some odd number of gallons. A few more pulls and the engine is dialed in. We pull a little timing just to stay safe and set the engine for stun. I’m not looking to go for a kill setting because I’m looking always looking for some durability. Also some juice will be plumbed in the future. Tommy was shocked by the results but very happy. The folks at the shop were all wondering what kind of numbers we ended with and were shocked that it’s an all motor setup. Seems like there are some turbo guys that would be sweating doing a head to head vs this all motor busa. The engine is ready to stretch it’s legs at Maxton. Now I need to get everything else on my punch list done. The push for Maxton which is only a week away will now begin.

Many people just want to see the max hp from a dyno run. That wasn’t the focus here. A nice broad torque curve was more important. Also to see how much of an increase/improvement my new engine has over the previous build. Now for the numbers:

previous engine spec vs. stock (full exhaust, map, filter) = 47% hp increase
new engine spec vs. stock = 76% hp increase
new engine spec vs. previous spec = 20% hp increase

previous engine spec vs. stock (full exhaust, map, filter) = 62% ft/lbs increase
new engine spec vs. stock = 86% ft/lbs increase
new engine spec vs. previous spec = 15% ft/lbs increase

It’s a big increase but that only came from a lot of changes. New pistons and new cams were the main internal changes with this engine. Many little things as well.

 

[99'busa]

Nice right up. I love it when big problems turn out to be silly. glad it all worked out smooth in the end. Good luck. btw, what did your compresion come out to?

 

[Commuta_Busa]

it's over 13:1

Nice right up. I love it when big problems turn out to be silly. glad it all worked out smooth in the end. Good luck. btw, what did your compresion come out to?

 

[Commuta_Busa]

here's a list of what has gone into my bike there could be other things but I don't remember them all: