Modern bikes are amazing, but they kinda suck

[Danno]

When you think about it, it's insulting that ECU's are not same across wide range of motorcycles. Even manufacturers. It's not like they are reinventing engine management for every engine. And why is there not an inexpensive general motorcycle ECU that will fit many makes and models?
You can get them for cars. For example Link ECU's. You wire them in, set them up with a PC, and start driving. You could put them in a bike but they are pricey.

I've been spending some time lately chatting with ChatGPT. Including getting some very nice advice on Arduino programing.

Aurduinos and pi can run almost anything and is off the shelf tech that anyone can use. But...blinking circuits work fine with a large cap and a relay. Ha or a 555 timer. Just like the bike world..all systems work fine. Some of us prefer certain technologies. I nailed the strobing knight rider leds 1st try on arduino. It took many tries to get a 4017 ic decade counter to do the same thing. And I have yet to achieve the transistor resistor method. So I would recommend the newer tech arduino for even simple circuits. And fuel injection is probably just downloading programs and trouble shooting. And changing parameters. Really cool technology but not as widespread as I once imagined it would be. The music enthusiasts have caught on faster than the moto world

 

[gpounce]

Well realtime control of a dynamic system like an engine is difficult. There are the various maps that need coming up with, you have to control fuel, timing, air, watch the wheel speed(s), engine rpm, crank position, throttle position all at once- maybe you have o2, temp and vacuum sensors also. Some of that stuff you have to sample at several thousand times/sec if not over 10k/sec and do the filtering also.

All the inputs have noise that needs filtering, all of the outputs have latency and error. You have to detect major classes of failure and design fallback modes.

I did knight rider leds with a pic some years ago its no comparison to hard realtime control systems, which I've also implemented. Even something as simple as speed controlling a DC motor has its nuances.

 

[Shinyribs]

Microsquirt seems very successful as a universal ECU.

I've got a WR450 here I'm supposed to be converting to EFI via microsquirt to make adding a turbo easier to tune. But I've just got SO much free time these days....l

 

[AwDang]

Microsquirt has been known to have resolution issues at >10k rpm. I know a few were tried on multicylinder road racers.

 

[Shinyribs]

Microsquirt has been known to have resolution issues at >10k rpm. I know a few were tried on multicylinder road racers.

I'm hoping the lower rpms and single cylinder helps with that. Fitting a cam sensor became my first stumbling block as I wasn't aware the valve cover was magnesium vs aluminum. Aluminum I can weld. Mag, not so much.

 

[Amos Malone]

Aurduinos and pi can run almost anything and is off the shelf tech that anyone can use. But...blinking circuits work fine with a large cap and a relay. Ha or a 555 timer. Just like the bike world..all systems work fine. Some of us prefer certain technologies. I nailed the strobing knight rider leds 1st try on arduino. It took many tries to get a 4017 ic decade counter to do the same thing. And I have yet to achieve the transistor resistor method. So I would recommend the newer tech arduino for even simple circuits. And fuel injection is probably just downloading programs and trouble shooting. And changing parameters. Really cool technology but not as widespread as I once imagined it would be. The music enthusiasts have caught on faster than the moto world

The main problem with homemade ECU would be the processor clock speed. At 6000 rpm you have 50 bangs per second, per cylinder. (Times two, times 360 degrees gives 36000 degrees of rotation every second.) Hitting the perfect ignition point down to a degree, and keeping the injector open for the perfect time, requires faster clock speeds than Arduino has. The most powerful Raspberry probably has the oomph to run ECU, but the operating system would inevitably cause random delays. You'll need firmware that controls the processor directly.

The Microsquirt looks nice as an option to replace obsolete OEM ECU. (So I take back my words before about general ECU availability.) The price is just about low enough for it to be economical to use it in a bike that is otherwise in a good condition. But requiring serial cable to program is very old school. The company I work for is years behind the leading edge, but even we have not used serial ports for about a decade.

 

[gpounce]

The main problem with homemade ECU would be the processor clock speed. At 6000 rpm you have 50 bangs per second, per cylinder. (Times two, times 360 degrees gives 36000 degrees of rotation every second.) Hitting the perfect ignition point down to a degree, and keeping the injector open for the perfect time, requires faster clock speeds than Arduino has. The most powerful Raspberry probably has the oomph to run ECU, but the operating system would inevitably cause random delays. You'll need firmware that controls the processor directly.

A Raspberry would be quite capable in that space- its well over 1ghz though you'd want to have a cpu with hardware floating point. I've worked on 32-bit 120mhz cpu systems which operate control loops at 5khz, reading bulk sampling data out of an fpga to run the state machines, ultimately driving stepper motors and voice coils- the later needing a synthesized waveform to obtain the actuation profile. As you suggest a lot depends on the operating system- Windows (and possibly MacOS) are terrible at the bounded latency interrupt and task switching requirements of such cases, Linux is a good choice, RTEMS or vxWorks or similar are better ones. To be fair, with everything turned on and running that 120mhz system (on vxWorks) was operating at about 98% cpu utilization which is near the ragged edge and needs a lot of optimization to make it work OTOH putting it on a 500mhz cpu would make running the same algorithm easy.

In contrast, some time ago I had the misfortune of trying to make a Windows NT4 realtime system work- on a dual 450mhz computer the OS couldn't hit 1 millisecond latency requirements in various routine situations like the operator scrolling a window... it would work fine until you tried to do something graphical. Might be Win10/11 are better but I'd be inclined to bet against it. Linux is night and day better in that regard- we run 1khz control loops all the time and see no latency jitter in correlation to user activity, generally it is stable up until the system i/o load over the 10gigabit ethernet links is nearly at capacity.

As for serial ports they are extremely common nowadays, just implemented via FTDI or similar USB chipsets- serial ports are profoundly simple and don't bring a lot of driver complexity, which is most helpful. Oldschool dsub serial ports still appear in critical systems like enterprise routers and so on where when such a connection exists it has to be robust so as to stand up to IT folks and other techs digging around in racks; I've personally gotten the panicked "ITS BROKEN HELP HELP!!" call because a tech dislodged a USB cable, who then denies everything even after being instructed as to which cable to plug back in.

 

[Amos Malone]

Absolutely. I took the Raspberry as an example of a common board that people can easily program at home and would probably be powerful enough. It would not be my first choice if I was designing a ECU.

Personally I use Linux Mint at home, currently trying Mate desktop, but there are some features I miss from Cinnamon.

Serial interfaces still work. After all USB is a serial interface. The one MicroSquirt uses is very old type, both connector and communication. As a communication standard it's outdated, slow and cumbersome. Having to manually set speed and bits etc. (although fondly looked back at by old style tinkerers) and figuring out if you have RS232 or RS485 is a nearly lost art. Negating that is the fact that it's pretty much a one-time setup. It's just that building a USB interface into the product, so non-specialists can use nearly any commercially available PC to directly program it, is simple. Then again, Windows (and it's driver management (sigh)) manages to complicate everything.

 

[oldschool]

Just reading the last 5 or 6 posts in this thread makes me realize just how prehistoric I've become.

I love the innovation and ideas, but since (damn near) fully retiring in the last few years I'm finding I have a hard time even doing the same computer work I did every freaking day just a few years ago. If you don't use it, you lose it. I'd love to do an EFI project but the electronics (as well as the need for a much stronger charging system on my vintage guinea pigs) is my stumbling block. So I'll be relegated to points and carbs for the foreseeable future. Though I do have an engineer friend who is working on an EI for the vintage Honda twins, specifically the 450.

 

[oldschool]

Then again, Windows (and it's driver management (sigh)) manages to complicate everything.

Isn't that the frigging truth, and it always has been.

Microsoft Winblows. There was actually a game called that, once upon a time (Win95 and 98 days)

 

[Ausfahrt]

 

[gpounce]

Absolutely. I took the Raspberry as an example of a common board that people can easily program at home and would probably be powerful enough. It would not be my first choice if I was designing a ECU.

lol, yeah a raspberry would be more or less the last platform I'd choose for an embedded system. Its great for tinkering and plenty fast, but I'd be more into fpga based PPC/MIPS/Sparc/openrisc.

I'm a Fedora person, having moved from Sun a while back.

 

[Ridefreak]

I had a hankering for a Bandit 1200 after hearing all the torque monster legends. Finally found a clean one and ran out with some cash to grab it. Quick test ride to make sure everything was in order and I came back pretty disappointed. I'm not trying to talk trash about B12's. They're exactly what Suzuki said it was: a detuned sport bike engine in a cheaper tube chassis. Never meet your heroes 😂

Only mention this since it's kinda on topic of the conversation. That was pretty much the tipping point where I started giving "modern" bikes a little more respect and appreciation. Just the weight savings from metallurgy technology advancing has made a big difference.

Similar expierence, I owned a zrx1200 for awhile, cool bike with old school aesthetics but compared to the next generation of sportbikes being sold at the same time, the ZRX was lacking in almost every area, handling, performance, ridability and reliability. Not that it was particularly bad in those areas but the new FI bikes were better. More importantly cleaning a 4cyl carb bank where the fuel has dried is one of life's pleasures I don't care to do anymore.

ZRX did beat them out if you like old school retro looks.

 

[Gwiz]

I'm not really in the market for a new bike, but you know how it is. Always fun to look at the new stuff and get to ride something new and different.

I'm currently on a '16 FZ 09. I like the slick , new style removable factory luggage options that some bikes offer. It looks good on the bike and sleek when it's off. I thought that would be handy, and I hear great things about Triumph's T Plane triples, so I decided to start shopping.

Basically, let's replace my FZ 09 with something similar ( 117hp, 417lbs, minimal electronics) but maybe more practical. Really wanting to try a T Plane

Long story short....

Speed Triple 1200 RS has good performance, but even with trading the clipons for bars I'm not sure the ergos are fixable. Luggage mounting would be a hassle and the $20 otd price tag ain't for me. Riddled with electronics.

Tiger Sport 660 is exactly what I'm looking for (don't care about windshields, but love the styling), but not with a 80hp 660. For some reason Triumph don't have that with their 900 triple engine in it.

Tiger 900 is down about 20hp and about 50-60 lbs heavier. Styling is great, but the seats are so low feeling even in the highest position. Factory luggage is just the standard adv style panniers that resembles microwaves mounted to your bike, so can't get excited about that. 19" front doesn't thrill me either. Riddled with electronics.

Got excited when I spotted a Tiger 850 Sport across the showroom in a beautiful orange color. Ooh, a Sport model. Nope, still has a 19" front. It's less riddled with electronics, which is a plus for me ...but for some reason they neutered the bike from 94hp down to 80, or something like that.

Street Triple headlights are kinda hard to swallow and the Speed Twin styling doesn't do much for me. Triumph doesn't make a nice, modern upright naked bike on 17's and that kinda shocked me.

Harley got nothing to offer. Still. Sadly.

Love what Royal Enfield has been up to lately, but nothing with the power:weight ratio to get me excited.

BMW F900R or XR looks amazing and the handling gets rave reviews from everyone. Great! Nice, stylized factory luggage is an option. Even better! Riddled with electronics. Meh, if they hold up I can live with them. BMW claims 94hp, but dyno reports are showing low 80's to the tire. Don't really want to take a 30+ hp loss while picking up an extra 50lbs of weight, so that idea is fizzling out.

My buddy's 890 Duke is super cool, but doesn't offer anything my Yamaha can't, and the engine is so dang noisy. 1290 Duke looks cool with it's factory bags, but the price for the GT bikes starts getting crazy. Riddled with electronics.

Honda won't give us a naked Africa Twin on 17's.

FTR1200 is wicked cool, but rather pricey and they kinda look dorky on 17's vs the original rim sizes. Riddled with electronics.

Kawasaki intent to build only four cylinders and 180° twins. Can't get excited there.

Suzuki kinda stuck on the four cylinders as well.

Honda Hornet 750 is extremely interesting to me, but not sure it'll ever make it to The States. Looks like it'll also be riddled with electronics.

Are Yamaha MT bikes really that special? I just can't really find much that compares on power output and weight, even putting price aside. But most importantly, EVERYTHING is absolutely RIDDLED with electronics!

I totally get that some folks want all the "electronics suites" and I'm glad it exists. But I hate it. Why do bikes need to rival sedan prices because of electronic packages? You can't sell a mechanical version and just let the tech lovers pay more for their desired "upgraded" version? It has to be shoved on to everyone?

Why does everything need LED lights? I don't want to be stuck having to spend $2k if my headlight goes out, or $700 if my tail light pops. It seems like gone are the days of swinging in Walmart at 1am to grab a $12 H4 when your low beam burns out.

I absolutely love the tech and performance of modern engine and chassis designs. Bikes are amazing and so much better then 20 years ago. But it really feels like the electronics are killing them. I guess it'd be ok if you plan to swap bikes every year and just always have a warranty to fall back on. Maybe that's the goal. But it makes me sad to see so many impressive machines and realize that they are a fleeting thing. Once the electronics start dying that the rest of the machine is designed to rely on...they're headed to the scrap yard.

We've got some of the best engines and chassis ever, but they're gonna fade away when replacement parts aren't available. That seems like such an incredible, avoidable waste.

Can we make motorcycles machines again?

I'm not sure why you hate electronics and LED lights. I can tell you the very last thing that will break on your bike is the electronics or the LED lights unless you're bashing it around in the hills. Then, just get something old. If an electronic thing goes out, it's likely something physical that is broke...like a wire connection. The only thing that breaks on my BMWs is the Garmin Nav VI GPS. Screen goes out about every year regardless of miles. I call Garmin and they give me a new one. This is getting old. I'm on my 3rd or 4th. They told me last time, they're coming up with a new version of it that won't break. We'll see. I'm on the list.

The nice thing about them is that you can control the zoom and change the screens with the wheel controller thing on BMW handlebars. That is super-handy.

LED lights are quite rugged. You won't be replacing them unless you crash. I've got a very high priced headlight on my GS. I bought a flip-down lexan clear cover for it. Nothing will hit it...unless I crash.

One of the bikes I don't see on your list is Suzuki V-twins. They're affordable and even the 650 is a hoot and quite fast with the revs up...torquey too, but not at low revs....smooth at all revs. They've fixed the 1000 V-twin engine's foibles and have come out with a middle-weight version of it now... Not sure the displacement...around 800 or 850?

I've heard good things about the 850 GS. A friend with long legs had one on an Alps trip last year and liked it a lot. I didn't ride it, but it's a thought.

I've had 4, count em, 4 BMW RTs. I bought the first one used, all the rest new. 1100, 1150, 1200, 1200 liquid-cooled. All great bikes...all with more electronics than the last. All better running and more reliable than the last. One needs to accessorize properly with a good seat and windscreen for touring and then learn to extract the most out of...then, they're amazing....and maintenance is pretty convenient with the heads out on the sides. Driveshaft requires a little patience to maintain, but it's not rocket science. I never trailer. I ride there, no matter where it is and no matter the weather.

That said, BMW went too far, electronically, with the 1250 RT. If you want satellite GPS, you have to buy it and mount it. The GPS they provide works from your phone...essentially BMW's very good app version of google maps. I like to get to hilly country and really wander for days on end. I need GPS where there is no phone service. You can download maps of where you think you'll be going in advance and work it from the memory, but it's a PITA I don't have with real GPS. Next thing that revolted me? In order to get the good options like shift assist and some others that I've found extremely useful, which I won't mention because they're "electronic" in nature, you have to buy active cruise control on the RT. Sorry, but I don't like it on my cars and I don't want it on a bike. So, to get around these little problems, I got a GS Adventure this time. My first GS. I got Adventure because the bigger tank offers nice wind protection, almost like an RT fairing.

After over a year with it, I've had zero problems and zero electronic issues. Issues I have had are expensive service...I bought the shop tools and follow YouTube instructions from an aeronautical mechanic/engineer who made the BMW tools for himself and now sells them online and knows how it's all done. It eats rear tires at a rate of one per 7 or 8K miles....same as my RT did. ...Wind noise is more than my aero-tuned RTs were. My last RT was so quiet, I rode it 1200 miles home from Montana without ear protection and never had ringing in my ears. I've got the GSA pretty good now, but still have to wear ear protection on long interstate trips. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet. Handling is different and power on the 1250 is massive...more than needed for a bike like this. 136HP with gobs of torque. The shift-cam allows you to putt around on it at low speeds very smoothly. The 6 to 9,000 RPM power is, well, scary fast. I used that power a bunch last year but I'm finding a new groove this year doing closer to legal speeds on smaller roads...I think it's the nature of the bike.

Oh...and it has "microwave oven panniers", I use on trips and really love them, but not around town. MPG isn't great on interstates with those things on....also, I think the gearing is shorter on the GSA than the RT. 3000 revs at 55mph in 6th seems high to me for this motor. I think slightly wider spread in the gearing would be better.

If you want a triple, get one. I've always loved each one I've tried. I used to really like the Tiger 1050. Still think that's a pretty cool bike if you can find one in good shape.

 

[Danno]

Well I use a pi and debian. A total crash would take under 2 mins to load a back os on a sd card. The hobby crowd has always said the pi lacks in real time and that is why there are many aurduino efi systems over the last decade. Github has plenty of programs.

 

[gpounce]

Well I use a pi and debian. A total crash would take under 2 mins to load a back os on a sd card. The hobby crowd has always said the pi lacks in real time and that is why there are many aurduino efi systems over the last decade. Github has plenty of programs.

"lack in realtime" has to be quantified- realtime means bounded latency, you have to design for it. A system with a 20ms latency with +/- 1 nanosecond of jitter is quite hard realtime- and a predicable latency you can design for. A system with 50us +/- 25us latency might be a real problem from a realtime standpoint depending on requirements.

I'm not suprised that arduino's are reasonably good for simple projects, but that platform doesn't look like it scales much bigger than the Microchip pic's do. From a surface examination of the arduino conversations on the topic, they are constrained for cycle time and headroom. So, a good platform for undemanding and/or small systems- but heading into a dead end for complicated and/or math-intensive applications.

A lot of the discussion is based on interpretions of documentation and assumptions/suppositions about timing- haven't seen measurements of latency and jitter for a system in operation yet. I'd be looking for the size of the standard deviation of interrupt response time jitter, or at least an upper bound as observed with a scope- this stuff is a bit tedious to design in but very achieveable on the pi and arduino platforms given the gpio capabilities. I assume its been done but perhaps not published in a form I could readily find.

 

[Shinyribs]

I'm not sure why you hate electronics and LED lights.

Literally just mentioned the WR450 I'm converting to FI.

My favorite motorcycle of all time is fly by wire.

I mentioned exactly why I don't like LED headlights.

I'm not sure we're on the same page, man.

 

[Shinyribs]

Similar expierence, I owned a zrx1200 for awhile, cool bike with old school aesthetics but compared to the next generation of sportbikes being sold at the same time, the ZRX was lacking in almost every area, handling, performance, ridability and reliability. Not that it was particularly bad in those areas but the new FI bikes were better. More importantly cleaning a 4cyl carb bank where the fuel has dried is one of life's pleasures I don't care to do anymore.

ZRX did beat them out if you like old school retro looks.

Beautiful bikes. Tons of underseat storage, but that was a heavy girl. Almost bought one new, just couldn't quite do it.

 

[Shinyribs]

Just reading the last 5 or 6 posts in this thread makes me realize just how prehistoric I've become.

I love the innovation and ideas, but since (damn near) fully retiring in the last few years I'm finding I have a hard time even doing the same computer work I did every freaking day just a few years ago. If you don't use it, you lose it. I'd love to do an EFI project but the electronics (as well as the need for a much stronger charging system on my vintage guinea pigs) is my stumbling block. So I'll be relegated to points and carbs for the foreseeable future. Though I do have an engineer friend who is working on an EI for the vintage Honda twins, specifically the 450.

It's all new territory for me. I don't have a real preference of EFI or carb, depending on the components in question.

Honda CV carbs with the aluminum pistons? Honestly, those can go to hell.

Keihin FCR carbs? Deadly reliable and I haven't seen a FI system that could replicate the smooth but instant throttle response they give.

The thing about something like microsquirt is the absolute library of information people freely share on YouTube alone. If you can fab up mounting a couple sensors and a fuel pump you can get going. Just like everything else in life, we don't know what the hell we're doing until we decide to learn.

Vintage charging systems are a real limitation for sure. But it's nothing a call to Ricky Stator and a couple hundred bucks can't sort out. With new bikes running $15-20k, a hotrod $200 stator is money well spent when wanting to breathe new life in to an old machine.

That said, there's someone badass about a mag fired, carb fed engine that cannot be replicated any other way. I love the people that keep them alive.

 

[oldschool]

That said, there's someone badass about a mag fired, carb fed engine that cannot be replicated any other way. I love the people that keep them alive.

Or a total loss battery and points ignition with a modified advancer to allow more dwell combined with carbs that turns 10,500 rpm without missing a beat. That will be my drag bike engine once built, and my red 450 street bike engine is the same except with a charging system and only a 4 amp battery. Eventually the red 450 will get the EI I mentioned that a VHT member who is an engineer is working on, with coils that produce between 50k and 60k and electronic advance. I'll just be the tester, I don't have the knowledge to help develop it.