Overview

I have my FZR1000RU Exup since 2001. They are fine motorcycles, which tend to get under the skin. They are all round performers; 0-60mph in under 3 seconds and capable of 165mph+. They are also sweet handlers and with a reasonable rider onboard as quick as anything else on what passes for roads in England.

For me they are also a good choice as i am only 5'6", and so i can get both feet down safely and turn on steep cambers without to much concern. For me i find it to be very roomy and it is not uncomfortable on longer rides.

Essentially it is hard for me to justify replacing it as it does almost anything i could want from a bike (though i dare say a ride on a new R1 and I would change my mind!!!)

They are reliable bikes however they do have an ongoing issue (which other motorcycles are also prone too). My first experience of this issue occured in 2003. I decided to go for a blast on a sunny saturday afternoon. I filled up and put the bike on the M5 (heading from bristol, south-west, to Exeter). I wanted to get down to the sweeping A-roads of Devon. I began the 85 mile motorway part of the journey and covered most of the distance at between 100-120mph. i got down to Exeter and then hit the smaller roads to get to Crediton (my plan was to ride via Holsworthy to Bude), as i got onto the crediton road, the reserve light came on (more correctly a reserve simulation light) and so i switched to reserve. This shocked me as at a ton on the motorway i would expect 125 miles at the very least from a tank! i decided to ease off a touch and got to the outskirts of Crediton as it ran out of fuel!!! Luckily a car stopped as i sat deciding what to do next, the driver was a rider and told me to sit tight, he returned 10 minutes later with a can of fuel (cheers mate!). I put the fuel in and before he went on his way, I started it. It fired up, but the idle was dire and it was rich as hell. Of course because i had been riding at high speed, i was unaware that anything was amiss. I rode very steadily to the petrol station and filled it up. It still refused to idle correctly. I decided to head home. I got back and a few days took the Carburetors off. The carb for cylinder 1 had a shot diaphram, but all four carbs had clear amounts of wear on the needles of the main jets (I did not look at the jets themselves, but i anticipated hey were ovalled).

My solution at this point was to get a replacement set of carbs off ebay and swap them out. None seemed to come up for my bike so i decided to but a set for a YZF1000 Thunderace. I managed to get a set off of a low-mileage (allegedly) Thunderace, these were fitted after a bit of bodging (different manifolds and chopped airbox). It ran way better and felt like it had better reponse. Problem over.

For a while anyway.....

....Anyway these carbs have gone the way of the original carbs. Having cleaned them carefully, setting the float heights. It started this season really well. But wear of the jets (emulsion tubes if you like) has become obvious. Fine at high revs, around town it is a total pig, going so rich it has be ridden like an RD350!!!!

While all of this has happened, my eye has been on the bigger picture. With out expensive diagnostic equipment or years of experience, tuning motorcycle multi-carb set-ups is a black art. Google Dyno-jet and see what you get!!!! I always understood the benefits of EFI (electronic fual injection), particularly in terms of tunability, though there will always be people who will say carbs are more tunable.

Whilst thinking about this problem in 2005 , i wondered whether a car type EFI system could be fitted to a motorcycle, while it is no-doubt possible, there would be many problems to overcome. For a start most cars rev to around 6500rpm, but the FZR has a limiter at 11500rrm. Would the car ECU (electronic control unit) be able to resolve and deal with this much higher processing rate (probably, but would you want to find out that it can't at 160mph!!!), what would the installer do about the car specific sensors such as the camshaft position sensors (not found on many bikes), the fact most car ECUs run ignition and fuel and finally tuning it would be extremely challenging (the fuelling map would be hard programmed into the ECU and this would be difficult impossible to adapt or change).

As you can see this is probably a blind alley, though im sure others have successfully done it.

So I vaguely remember searching on the 'net for 'Homebrew injection'. The search turned up the usual crap, plus high end injection systems for racing applications (way out my budget!!) and something calld Megasquirt (this was an Epiphany for me!!!)

After loads of reading loads on Megasquirt (to be called MS from this point, 'cause i am lazy) on the official site http://www.bgsoflex.com/megasquirt.html, on the official forum http://www.msefi.com/ and on various other sites, forums, messageboards etc, i was hooked by the idea of binning carbs and fitting EFI to the FZR. Now MS is experimental, in other words it ain't gonna be plug-and-play (though for a HEMI or some other mainstream performance engine, there is probably who sells a kit with predefined fuel maps (and ignition)). So if i attempted this it was gonna be very much learn as i went along (never a bad thing, i am reasonably practical and have a degree in Mechanical Engineering).

I'll explain the rest in the next stages of this blog!!!