RIDEFAST DECEMBER 2021

labour and plenty know how that all cost a pretty penny, but
if you are addicted to power and speed or just wanna be the
‘Groot Meneer’ at the braai then you just have to do it…
We asked the question: Modern Fuel injection eliminates the
need for fiddling with jetting – no matter the altitude. Surely it
will pick up that the Cats are removed and compensate with a
richer fuel mixture?
Well it turns out that, particularly on the latest models it does
not.
There are a bunch of sensors all over the exhaust system,
airbox and etc, as well as charcoal filters with sensors and so
much more that measure atmospheric conditions like unburnt
fuel, (which gets reburned by the way), altitude/air pressure,
humidity, hot and cold, O2 vs CO2 and a bunch of other
conditions and variables that all affect the air fuel ratio every
millisecond the engine is running. These sensors then send all
this information along to the relevant ECU, yes there is more
than one and up to nine in some cases, which process the
information and then adjust the air fuel mixture to be optimum
for performance, fuel economy and power with acceptable
emissions.
Removing the Cat messes with the bikes brains and gets it
adjusting, recalculating, recalibrating and changing stuff up like
the cat is still there and when the info comes back less than
favourable from all the sensors its does it all over again and
again and again and… until it eventually has a nervous
breakdown and just blows everything up.
On modern bikes, each bike has its own unique code, pretty
much like DNA, registered with its company of manufacture the
day it rolled off the production line - and you have to have some
very top secret and complicated equipment to connect the bike
to the cloud before you can access any of its ‘Control Units’ and
start changing the settings.
The codes of which appear as lights on a board and you have to
have a ‘monkey puzzle’ card for each different model of bike to
know what code the light is referring to, then you have to look
that code up in a thesaurus of codes before you know which
sensor or part to closer investigate and or replace.
Which is a great little Segway to the next part of this
investigation, the electronics packages.
But before we do, it has been noted by more than one rider that
the re-installation of the catalytic converter noticeably increased
the low torque of the engine and that is what you need to get
the hole shot and accelerating out of corners or coming off
the brakes or getting the front wheel in the air for that perfect
wheelie pic.
Food for thought.
Happy biking…
Remapping basically switches this function
off and runs the engine on a pre-setting
determined by the technician. And don’t think
you can get your nefarious hacker computer
nerd nephew or niece to hack in and do all of
that for you on the cheap.
RIDEFAST MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2021 63