In search of Dallas's Missing ponies
 

Had a quick look at Dallas's bike earlier today, he had taken the plugs out for a compression test and found the front plug was very much of the white insulator variaty, so looks to be running rather week still, dispite being on its 2nd set of injectors and 3rd ECU already this season

Ran the compression check and came out with about 120psi on each cylinder using the tester I bought 30 years ago
I then ran a leak down test on both cylinders and both cylinders were very good, loosing a couple of % at most

Had a look at the cambelts and timing marks, all lined up ok but the front cylinder belt was extra slack going on the allen key method between the roller and the belt I could have easily fitted a 10mm allen key if not a 12mm one, so retensioned the belt for him

Still a lot to do over the next few weeks but hoping to get it up from its 54 ish bhp back nearer to the 64 ish it started the season with, then hopefully he will be able to mix it with Neil, Andy C and Matt
That is Providing its dry and he gets out and does some quallifying so that he doesn't have to start from the back of the grid

Don't know if it helps Kev but the rear cylinder on mine always seems to run hotter than the front :confused: . Thats with either the brown or white injectors (to be honest the white injectors made no difference at all) and a different ECU. The ventilation is I think is as good as the front even more so now without the airbox. Go figure eh.

Speak to Angry about it as well cos at Pembrey he had a temp sensor directly onto the rear cylinder.

That's why I ran an offset map with a slightly richer mixture to compensate for the rear cylinder being hotter. It's a well-known ducati thang.

Still only made 59bhp though!

I always ran cold air ducts to the rear cylinder.

Wasn't that to keep the 800 pot cool? :devil:









PS For the avoidance of doubt given other recent threads I AM ONLY JOKING. Chaz is a top bloke who put good riders on well put together bikes*, and also provided good food and company through the years. (Are you still coming to Cadwell so I can bring the cheese and wine?)

* PPS they were ok until their new owners kept binning them :lol:

Ha Ha! it was the only DD bike to be proven legal;)

Yepp should be at cadwell that's the plan anyway.

ps you better bring loads of wine & cheese Lord Rattler will be there:D:

Thing is guys at the start of the season it had a healthy output in the 64bhp area and then it lost nearly 20% of that and dispite Dallas spending out quite a bit to try and get it sorted its still not back to where it was.

As I said the bike is going through a bit of a re-hash at the moment and one of the things Dallas is hoping to do is to loose the Airbox.
Made a bit easier by Chaz having already repositioned the Battery under the seat.

Just a thought Kev its got adjustable pulleys, yes the marks line up but it doesn't tell you where the cam actually is. So You really need to go thro' that loop either work out at full lift or opening at 1mm lift. But needs veryfying.
He was still .....just faster than me at Pembrey. :p

Nope Phil, it was all setup at the start of the season by Baines Racing using the non adjustable cam pulleys just as they did with his 2010 engine, went straight from Baines to have the power commander setup and came out of there with 64 and a bit BHP

Oh F<>k thats that scenario quashed. The Karl foggy lookaike at Pembrey was saying he had 150 psi on his compression. I thought gosh thats good, a lot better than mine. Then I put my trusty snap on guage on his and it read the same as mine 125psi.

So if comp and valve timing are good, then its fuelling or ecu or ignition advance.

Glad I've only got carbs. Good luck Kev, I know Dallas is p....eed off with his outlay and nothing to show for it. :mad:

With Snow white for a front spark plug its certainly pointing to fueling, couldn't see anything that would be giving an air leak, but may well be worth us removing and taking a closer look at the front inlet manifold in case it has a split in it, you'll know exactly what I mean Phil
Maybe take the vac gauges up there next, but they would probably only identify an air leak below the point where the vac gauge connects to

How about checking the fuel pressure? Last year mine was ok when set up on the dyno then over the course of half a season the pump started failing, giving me no power, white plugs and finally a clucked engine come Snetterton.

A quick way is to check that there is fuel coming out of the return pipe, as it will prove there is more than the 3bar regulator pressure....

If that's ok, whip out the injectors and check they're ok, and/or swap front and rear to see if the white plug moves, if its only one plug.

Paul

Pressure was checked at BSD and given the all clear.
I would also suspect a common element like fuel pressure to cause both cylinders to run weak not just the front one
Already tried another complete set of injectors that came off a bike that was known to be running well.
Maybe its a problem in the harness, is the injector receiving the full signal
The power commander was removed at the same time as the FIM ECU so can't be down to them as its now doing it with just a Magneti Marelli 59M ECU.
Stopped by at Dallas's earlier this evening on the way back from Durham and helped cut a few un-needed wires out of the replacement harness that is going on and just finished making a note of the last few remaining wires we need to connect up.
Once the harness is done its refit the PC3 USB and see about getting it mapped and then see what power we end up with.
Can't see it being the engine but as a last resort I still have his engine from last year sat in the garage, just needs the replacement front cylinder head setup to match the back one

Hopefully we will soon know if we are any nearer to rounding up some of the lost ponies.
The bike is now up and running on a almost complete different injection system, the only things that haven't changed are the fuel pump, the pressure regulator and the engine temperature sensor.
Now it just needs the PC3 USB fitting and then getting it set up on the Dyno

should all be done just in time for Cadwell

I have a pressure regulator if you need one?


Chris:burn:

Thanks for the offer Chris, but I all ready have a few spare, the reason we haven't changed them is because Mark at BSD checked the pump and pressure regulator and gave them a clean bill of health

Well its been on the dyno and the ponies were still missing

While waiting for the Dyno day to come around we removed the forks and stripped them, then binned them and put my spare set in, I usually find they work better when they're straight and don't have gouges in the chrome where they pass through the bushing.
Dispite them being fitted with 0.85kg/mm spings they actually tested at 1.2kg/mm due to the amount of binding going on inside the leg as the spring and pre-load spacer tried to compress through a slight bend.

In a final attempt to track down the ponies before Cadwell, I changed the front cylinder head for the one I had fitted to Dallas's engine from last years crashed bike.
And after checking out the head he's been running so far this year I'm glad we did it.

Here is a pic of two exhaust valves, each from 620 DD race bikes with the engines built by the same people, both from the front horizontal cylinder and both have done similar race mileage.

They look bigger than mine ;)

That'll explain your lack of power then
Must be those late Monster 583 Heads you have fitted :frog:

Oh, I'd zoomed in on the image :lol:

Looks like you picked up a dodgy pair of heads then :rolleyes:

lets hope that sorts it; be good to see the Porn Star on the top step

Well none of that worked although he bike was far more rideable at Cadwell partly due to a smoother (Lack of) power curve and the reworked front forks

Even reverting back to last years engine hasn't helped, If anything its lost him another bhp with it now down to 53bhp

Time to Blame the exhaust as its the only thing that we haven't tried and apparently it has been modified since the original Dyno runs, two possibilities here I suppose, the larger diameter tail section could be slowing the gasses down and causing issues or the dimensional change has altered the negative pressure that is reflected back up the exhaust to help scavange the cylinder and is now to much and robbing the inlet charge during valve overlap.

No quick fix as ideally another pipe needs to be fabricated , but in the short term Dallas may try a longer silencer with a smaller diameter core to see what effect that has.