- Joined
- May 25, 2023
- Messages
- 19
- Location
- SF Bay, CA
Hi guys,
I've been posting under my personal account (shiv happens) for the past few weeks. Mostly in the 2023 Streetfighter V4 USA thread (2023 Streetfigher V4 USA Model). Since the content I'll be posting is relevant to my tuning company, I'm posting under my company account.
A little background:
A few weeks ago, we purchased a new 2023 SFV4 test bike from Newport Beach Ducati. Great bunch of folks. Immediately upon bringing it back to northern CA, the first test ride revealed a very obvious problem with 2nd gear. It didn't make power with the engine sounding choked and eventually triggering a limp mode if you stayed in the throttle for more than several seconds. Big problem to say the least. I reported the problem to the Senior Technical Director at Ducati North America who I've known for a few years. He was unaware of the issue and asked me to collect as much data as possible so he could forward it to the development team in Italy.. I put the bike on the dyno, data logged several parameters, and discovered that the problem was caused by exhaust servo mapping that kept the valve closed in the entirety of 2nd gear, regardless of RPM or applied throttle twist. This data was presented to Ducati Italy and they developed a software recall/update that they are currently trying to push through the approval process so all the new 2023 SFV4 owners (in the US) could enjoy their bikes. Most of the new owners were still in the break-in process so they weren't even aware they had an issue until the word got out. Even right now, most Ducati dealers don't even know about the issue but will soon be notified of the recall. More backstory can be found in the thread linked above.
So obviously, being a company that specializes in engine management/tuning, we didn't need to wait until Ducati released their fix. We simply isolated the section in the ECU code and solved the problem. No red tape to deal with. In addition to solving the 2nd gear issue, we developed a nice conservative Stage 1 tune (suitable for otherwise stock bikes with stock exhaust). Stage 2 (for bikes with aftermarket slip-on/full Akra system is in development now and more details/results to be disclosed possibly next week. I know that this isn't a Streetfighter forum but most of the tech info I'll be posting below will apply to the Panigale to some degree. Here goes....
All Dyno runs were done in 5th gear using our in-house Dynojet. It's not a glory dyno and isn't calibrated to make artificially high numbers. So comparisons should only be made between the different runs recorded on this same dyno. After being in this business for 25yrs, I don't cherry pick runs or do any tricks to make the results seem better than they really are. My only goal is to make the engine run optimally with good safety margin. We have several thousand customers (car and bike) all over the world who can attest to that. Here's a relevant video of some Ducati SFV4 tuning work I did with the crew at motorcycle.com a couple years ago that might give some context to what we do:
First, to establish a baseline/stock pull, we warmed up the bike and did 6 pulls with 10-15s of cool down between each run to keep coolant temps within normal operating range:
Power of the stock bike was quite consistent around 180-183hp. We had a couple outliner runs as low as 177hp but we disregarded since they were the exception, not the norm. For comparison, our 2020 SFV4 made 185-188hp on this same dyno. Without having a huge sample of Euro 4 and Euro 5 bikes to test, it's hard to make any solid conclusion on power output differences. But I would lean towards the Euro 5 bikes making a bit less power all other things equal. I've been told that the exhaust system is more restrictive on the newer Euro 5 bikes and that would make sense. I've also seen similar power differences between later (2020-21) Euro 4 Panigale and newer Euro 5 Panigale.
During each of those pulls, we also logged Air/Fuel Ratio in each individual cylinder (2 cylinders at a time). In order to do this correctly, we plugged up the air injection system (same concept as installing block off plates) and drilled and pressed rivnuts into each of the 4 primary exhaust runners. This allows us to get AFR in each of the 4 individual cylinders with no fresh air contamination from the SAS system using the Wideband o2 sensors integrated into the Dynojet Power Core module.
Here are the AFR results taken from those 6 baseline pulls:
The bold runs are from the front cylinder banks. And the non-bold runs are from the rear cylinder banks. One thing interest is how lean the engine is mapped to run though the midrange. There is also some consistent variance between the front and rear pairs. That isn't unusual. But it certainly isn't ideal for maximum power, consistency and safety.
So I tuned for a few days and ended up with a nice, consistent and safe Stage 1 tune:
And individual cylinder AFR (bold is front cylinders):
Comparing a few stock pulls to a view OFT Stage 1 HP/TQ pulls (bold is Stage 1):
+10hp gains through most of the useable rev range. With as much as 12-14hp gains at 11.5k RPM.
And comparing AFR runs between stock and Stage 1(bold):
It's getting late and I can only post 10 pics per post. So I'll continue tomorrow and go over the data in more detail. Have a good night!
Regards
Shiv
I've been posting under my personal account (shiv happens) for the past few weeks. Mostly in the 2023 Streetfighter V4 USA thread (2023 Streetfigher V4 USA Model). Since the content I'll be posting is relevant to my tuning company, I'm posting under my company account.
A little background:
A few weeks ago, we purchased a new 2023 SFV4 test bike from Newport Beach Ducati. Great bunch of folks. Immediately upon bringing it back to northern CA, the first test ride revealed a very obvious problem with 2nd gear. It didn't make power with the engine sounding choked and eventually triggering a limp mode if you stayed in the throttle for more than several seconds. Big problem to say the least. I reported the problem to the Senior Technical Director at Ducati North America who I've known for a few years. He was unaware of the issue and asked me to collect as much data as possible so he could forward it to the development team in Italy.. I put the bike on the dyno, data logged several parameters, and discovered that the problem was caused by exhaust servo mapping that kept the valve closed in the entirety of 2nd gear, regardless of RPM or applied throttle twist. This data was presented to Ducati Italy and they developed a software recall/update that they are currently trying to push through the approval process so all the new 2023 SFV4 owners (in the US) could enjoy their bikes. Most of the new owners were still in the break-in process so they weren't even aware they had an issue until the word got out. Even right now, most Ducati dealers don't even know about the issue but will soon be notified of the recall. More backstory can be found in the thread linked above.
So obviously, being a company that specializes in engine management/tuning, we didn't need to wait until Ducati released their fix. We simply isolated the section in the ECU code and solved the problem. No red tape to deal with. In addition to solving the 2nd gear issue, we developed a nice conservative Stage 1 tune (suitable for otherwise stock bikes with stock exhaust). Stage 2 (for bikes with aftermarket slip-on/full Akra system is in development now and more details/results to be disclosed possibly next week. I know that this isn't a Streetfighter forum but most of the tech info I'll be posting below will apply to the Panigale to some degree. Here goes....
All Dyno runs were done in 5th gear using our in-house Dynojet. It's not a glory dyno and isn't calibrated to make artificially high numbers. So comparisons should only be made between the different runs recorded on this same dyno. After being in this business for 25yrs, I don't cherry pick runs or do any tricks to make the results seem better than they really are. My only goal is to make the engine run optimally with good safety margin. We have several thousand customers (car and bike) all over the world who can attest to that. Here's a relevant video of some Ducati SFV4 tuning work I did with the crew at motorcycle.com a couple years ago that might give some context to what we do:
First, to establish a baseline/stock pull, we warmed up the bike and did 6 pulls with 10-15s of cool down between each run to keep coolant temps within normal operating range:
Power of the stock bike was quite consistent around 180-183hp. We had a couple outliner runs as low as 177hp but we disregarded since they were the exception, not the norm. For comparison, our 2020 SFV4 made 185-188hp on this same dyno. Without having a huge sample of Euro 4 and Euro 5 bikes to test, it's hard to make any solid conclusion on power output differences. But I would lean towards the Euro 5 bikes making a bit less power all other things equal. I've been told that the exhaust system is more restrictive on the newer Euro 5 bikes and that would make sense. I've also seen similar power differences between later (2020-21) Euro 4 Panigale and newer Euro 5 Panigale.
During each of those pulls, we also logged Air/Fuel Ratio in each individual cylinder (2 cylinders at a time). In order to do this correctly, we plugged up the air injection system (same concept as installing block off plates) and drilled and pressed rivnuts into each of the 4 primary exhaust runners. This allows us to get AFR in each of the 4 individual cylinders with no fresh air contamination from the SAS system using the Wideband o2 sensors integrated into the Dynojet Power Core module.
Here are the AFR results taken from those 6 baseline pulls:
The bold runs are from the front cylinder banks. And the non-bold runs are from the rear cylinder banks. One thing interest is how lean the engine is mapped to run though the midrange. There is also some consistent variance between the front and rear pairs. That isn't unusual. But it certainly isn't ideal for maximum power, consistency and safety.
So I tuned for a few days and ended up with a nice, consistent and safe Stage 1 tune:
And individual cylinder AFR (bold is front cylinders):
Comparing a few stock pulls to a view OFT Stage 1 HP/TQ pulls (bold is Stage 1):
+10hp gains through most of the useable rev range. With as much as 12-14hp gains at 11.5k RPM.
And comparing AFR runs between stock and Stage 1(bold):
It's getting late and I can only post 10 pics per post. So I'll continue tomorrow and go over the data in more detail. Have a good night!
Regards
Shiv
