Plug and pray

I have delayed submitting this blog as I had hoped to get it all sorted before submitting bt it has been months and I haven't got round to it. I will probably update this one or publish a follow up blog when/ if I ever progress this mod.


Having just spend the best part of eight months away from my VFR and NSR250 MC28, I had found that buying bits for them made me feel a little less sad.

First on my list to fit was a powercommander V (from here on refereed to as pc) that I had picked up second hand off of a chap in the states for £100.
Ever since fitting the air filter and exhaust system I have wanted to get one as I knew the fuelling would be off and now I had one that I could just "chuck in".
As I'm sure you may be wondering already, I was aware that Dynojet don't make a pc V for the fifth gen bikes only the pc III USB. I had quizzed the guy selling it prior to bidding as the part number was for an 09 VTEC (sixth gen) but he told me he had removed it from his own fifth gen bike. He agreed it was odd but it worked so why not go for the newer model?

Fitting

You barely need the instructions to fit one of these but it would be silly not to so I started pulling the tank up and the airbox out to gain access to where the fuel injection loom plug aught to be.
Now the fifth and sixth gen bikes are very similar, they share the same plug, hence why the pc V works on fifth gen bikes at all. They do not however share the same loom plug location so after all of the bother or removing the air box (try it, it's a riot) I had to stick it all back on and take the left fairing off instead.
There I found a, far easier to get to, plug covered in various road grime. From there I was able to root the pc's loom, connect the solitary earth lead to the earth point on my battery and sling the box in the back.

Another part of this kit was a pair of Lambda sensor eliminators. Previous blog readers will know I have had problems with misread resistor codes after I had performed the DIY version of this modification after changing the header pipes. plugging these chaps in made things allot quicker and easier but most importantly (touch wood) these wont catch fire.

The unit was pre-programmed with a map for a 00-01 bike with an aftermarket can and optional filter so I ran with that and took her for a spin.

A very short spin as it happened as my bike apparently had gained a rather severe stutter. 

changing maps

I then went about changing maps like a teenage girlfriend changes outfits 10 minutes before a night out.

I had to first cross the hurdle that was the pc V wasn't meant for my bike; so there were no maps on dynojets website.                        

 I first looked at the VTEC maps desgned for the pcV but I didn't much fancy all of the compensation for the VTEC kick in so continued looking. 

 After the shocking revelation that the power commanter that was not meant for my bike doesn't come with maps for my bike, I then downloaded all of the pc III USB maps they had for my bike. With this in hand I then manually copied one over to pc V format for an evening, making up the missing line with mode numbers. I uploaded this one to the bike and it did run better than the previous map but the bike was still bogging and surging as it accelerated still. 

 It was that evening that I realized I could save pc III format maps I had opened in pc V format. Much easier! The pc V software also fills in the missing column for you with average figures. With this I tried a number of maps but none really improved matters much over the other.

 I then tried some other maps on third party websites. The best of which was VFRdiscussion which had a good list for various models with comments from others making the same modification to their fifth gen bike. Again however my bike twitched its way down the road showing strong signs of Parkinson's in her old age. All be it; brought on by a more and more unwelcome parasite.

 I swapped between the OEM and Yoshy can to see if that made a difference but all it did was make the problem noisier.

As I had not ridden the bike in a few months I then tried disconnecting the pc all together to see if it was actually the bike at fault but everything ran just fine pointing a rather gnarly finger at a broken pcV.
 Have I bought another lemon?

Lemon picking

I then tried putting a zero map onto the PowerCommander. This would show that there was a problem with the pc module itself and not just the many maps I had tried. On the test ride I found that although it was not a pronounced problem when cold the bike became progressively more unridable as it warmed through. The bike bogs and surges through the midrange making holding neutral throttle through corners an issue. THis was accompanied by increased popping on the overrun.
So this showed that the PC unit itself was at fault.
Unfortunately with the time frame since purchasing I was stuck with this faulty unit having found the seller to just be smug and generally unhelpful.
I will try to send the unit off to Dynojet to see if they can diagnose the fault so this isn't a total waist of money and time.
Lesson learned?
Only buy stuff if you can use it soon after as other people are tossers.