Waking the sleeping Beast

The first time when an unfamiliar engine barks to life is unforgettable. It Lives ! The moment before, it sat as a cold lump of metal and it leaped up and you couldn't get your thumb off the starter button fast enough. What you thought it might hold deep inside with its finely machined internals now breaks the stillness with a sound unique to the surrounding neighborhood and barking dogs.
There is not a single place to touch this bike that you cannot feel it clearing its throat and warming the cool air of this mornings first ride . Based on a silent, hopeful, gamble of what it looked like under layers of neglect and dust; now roaring with impatience to flex, and to lunge.
Every machine has a soul. Touched by hands in the building and brought out into the light to run as it was intended to. After its long sleep it is you who are wide awake. Your pulse isn't going to slow and relax. This machine demands attention and room to stretch outside the confines of long storage within silent walls.
Placing your hands on both grips instantly attaches all your senses to this breathing beast. It has more then you will be capable of handling. It senses, then demands to know , what kind of rider you are. From this moment forward you are more than straddling this bike. You are the final connection to what the capable machine can do and how you manage it ; which is your soul blending with this awakening. There is something more visceral about this V Twin then others. The passion and hot blood of Italy races through its design and creation. Both function and beauty. Made to excite feelings and connections that some never do. A mutual excitement that makes smiles light up memories long after you can only rock and dream.and

WELL, Did it puke all over, then quit. OR did you abuse it to wake the rev limiter?

What a poet-----------------

The Rev limiter kicks in at 7 grand. That's fine for me as the sweet spot is 5 to5500. For shifting with a purpose. Cruises nicely from about 3 grand. High gear loaf with no bucking or rattles is 2500. Idle is now at 1200. So if I want to play 70 and beyond its 33 mpg. Cruise at 60 -65 and shift at 35 to 4 grand then 54 mpg. It's now time to hook up the twin max and take notes on what the meter shows at various speeds and rpm. I figured out how to air bleed adjust without having to struggle with the Allen wrench under each TB. MY LOW beam is shutting off at times. Thinking wiring diagram and replacing low beam relay switch.
No puking required. Abuse is relative. New oils in gearbox, engine,and front forks. Next up will be suspension /swing arm and I can't wait to Sawzall the current oil filter. I want to see what sort of debris lies within. Yes I know I will add to metal particles cutting it open but I will try a pipe cutter first. I will also catch all used oils in a clear glass basin that use to be the loading door window on our former front loader washing machine. ,reading Tea leaves.

Rev limiter should be higher than that, 8,250+ from memory. Do you mean it starts going 'Blurp-Blurp-Blurp' at 7K or the little red triangle starts flickering? That's just the gear shift indicator, you can change that in the dash menus, the rev limiter is hard coded into the map.

What's the air bleed plan if you're not using a key? The bleed screws are where they are?

Now that I think on it..it was a first or second test ride. It wouldn't pull past 7000. Breaking up and power fell off a cliff. Now that I have replaced right plug lead it fires on both cylinders

I don't want to push it further until I buy another timing light and check the valve clearance. Right now I am wondering where the engine heat sensor went? Not screwed into the base of right cylinder 'V'. I want to replace left plug lead tomorrow. Changed out oil and filter was vulcanized to its base. No sign of any lube. Go figure. Do you know the mm size for the oil filter?
The air bleed screws are tightly fully closed. I have two needle valves that can plug in to the new vacuum tubing that would normally connect to the now missing stepper motor. I have not touched those bleeder screws..yet. These needle valves would allow idle air adjustment without the mirror and Allen UNDERBEATH TBs. I want to see what the twin max reads without touching/opening the screws.

If it is reluctant to rev beyond 7,000 I would first be checking the cam timing.

Air bleed screws should NOT be closed tight. Just lightly seated is all it needs. You'll achieve nothing apart from risking breaking things by cranking them down tight.

I would suggest that the engine temperature sensor must be there somewhere as if it wasn't plugged in it would throw a service warning on the dash.

What do you need a timing light for? The ignition and injection timing is essentially fixed physically and there are no timing marks to observe.

Oil filter size is 76mm if it's an eight flute filter.

Thanks Pete. Yesterday was yet more progress. No more TB adjustment after balancing them to the 1200 idle. Truly. I used the photos in shop manual and moved the gas tank away from the engine. There is a tapped hole with a wide machined contact area around the hole but where the photo shows a blue engine heat sensor there is nothing. Not tapped up or zip tied to other wires etc. Raining tomorrow so perfect day to do the valve adjustment and replace other plug lead on left coil. THEN I can see what the revs will do. If it hits 7 grand without a miss then that's it for me. I am 71 and have nothing to prove. The tires have hardend from heat and age. I have a set to replace them with but have to buy the tools to remove the axle nuts. Unique from a lot of other road surfaces, they use crushed limestone and oil for almost all the secondary roads. Limestone is soft and loves water. Even morning dew in a low spot or shadow acts like a coating of frost in New England. My road racing days was Germany to Italy in the 70s. 3 years ago I had the airlift evac for a broken back in two fractures. I have healed enough to know enough.

When you say you 'Balanced them to a 1200 idle' what do you mean? The idle speed is hard coded into the map and is non adjustable by *Physical* means.

If the cam timing is out it will drop the head off a valve. It's easy to check.

Both throttle bodies are on the same connector rod. Someone before me disturbed both the sacred screw AND the paint on the connector rod. The stepper motor wasn't on the bike but the bracket is still there. (Same with engine heat sensor...missing completely. ) The stepper motor was designed to manage the transition from ECU set Idle (1200 rpm +/- 50) along with air sensor in air box plus temperature input and air density(?).
With the engine warmed up I pried the TB connecting rod off the bottom of right TB. NOW THE TB's are mechanically disconnected from each other. The idle is rich but steady at 1200. Next I experimented with adjusting just the right end of the rod. I could increase the idle by shortening the connecting rod which when attached back to the right TB would apparently open both throttle plates a little more. This told me the pre-programed ECU is working and the magic screw for the left throttle plate is not totally whacked. There it will remain until I get more performance feedback. What this did is smooth out the power off idle. On the level it would pull 6th smoothly with no missfies bucking or other nasties.; at 2500. THIS was a momentary test to check mixture and ignition. This 8v passed that test. I tried to independently measure TB balance with no load/neutral and got a steady read of the right TB slightly higher vacuum But that was only at max sensitivity on the Twin Max. Splitting hairs for now. Right now the performance is smoother and more responsive through all gears. No high speed hard acceleration until I check valve clearances and replace the other cracked spark plug connector. I also added slack in the throttle cable to allow the ECU to freely react to the throttle position sensor. Don't know if that is part of the improvement. I am pretty sure that the whole ECU was richened and the response increased. It acts like the quarter turn quick throttle I installed on a bike decades ago.It is best to get in a more vertices position before yanking on the throttle. It WILL break loose back there. It is definitely rideable and more manageable in town stop and go stuff.

Best of luck with it. You'll never be able to regain baseline if you've moved the linkage rod.

Never say never. If ..you're correct then what? It doesn't run to its max efficiency. Or the Engineers have made it tamperproof? That would be ROM. I have been making things work with countless failures. I always wanted to know why it won't work. I didn't buy this bike because of the fuel management or the fuel gauge and electric pump inside the tank. I have this bike because, if the boxes fail I always have a plan B. There are a lot of people that depend on your solid and conservative advice. I have said thank you for my T3 five speeds rebuild guidance. I am a Luddite through and through. Too old to depend on all these magic black boxes. I knew before I even had my leg over it ; that Iwill never tame it. So "never " isn't used much in my world. The people that depend on others is not a bad life to have. But it is also why I don't share the experiments until I fail. Because I love to make people laugh; even if it's at my own expense at being the fool.

OK, my last comment on this.

My approach is not *Conservative*. This is a situation where there is a right way to do things and a multitude of WRONG ways to approach it.

The machine you bought had already been screwed around with by some fuckwit. Even so, if you had done some reading and made an effort to understand how the throttlebodies work and how the information sent by the throttle position sensor is interpreted it just might of been recoverable. But no, with no access to diagnostic tooling you just started randomly turning screws and fiddling with the linkage rod ball joints without any understanding why that is so terminally dangerous.

Having done so you have rendered the mapping baseline unrecoverable and introduced a throttle plate variance and TPS inaccuracy that will compound as the throttle is operated. Without access to a flow bench and flow figures from an unmolested and preferably new set of throttlebodies that baseline CANNOT be reestablished. Sorry, it's not possible.

You might be able to get the bike to idle and even run but it will be incredibly sub-optimal and chances are it will cause itself further damage. By all means continue your experiments, really, you can't make it any worse than it already is. But please, please, don't try and convince other people that you have unlocked some sort of magical tuning or repair secrets and encourage people with problems to follow your example. There aren't enough of these bikes around for them to be ruined by enthusiastic ignorance! There's enough of that going around already.

I wish you the very best of luck.

I totally agree with your heartfelt words. The only way to keep other newbies from irreversibly damaging these finely tuned machines is to learn first or use the professionals. I have been reading and using many resources.The only way I can take full responsibility for my own actions is to not discuss them in ln public as it is certain someone else will take unnecessary risk and do irreversible damage to their machine. My apologies to you Pete and anyone who was tempted to follow me into dangerous experimenting.

Pete, your humor and blunt statement of both fact and opinion are priceless! I hope you enjoy your upcoming summer. We will be visiting AU late Jan / early Feb I’ll pm details when I have them…