OddBike Tech - How to Tune Ducati Motorcycle Fuel Injection

This week on the OddBike YouTube Channel I'm presenting the first installment of a new series called OddBike Tech.

OddBike Tech will be a showcase of the sort of in-depth technical information OddBike has become known for. No dumbing it down for the masses here. The appeal will certainly be limited, but the knowledge we can share will be invaluable to those who desire to learn.

For our first installment of OddBike Tech I'll be covering a topic that I'm intimately familiar with, but isn't well documented online: tuning Ducati fuel injection. 

Specifically I'll be covering the basics of tuning the EPROM-based Magneti-Marelli Alpha-N systems used in the 851, 888, 916, 996, 748, ST2, and ST4 in the form of the P7, P8 and 1.6M ECUs. These procedures also apply to similar systems used in mid-to-late 1990s Moto Guzzi and MV Agusta models.

Useful links: 

TunerPro Software
Moates Burn 2 Harware
GuzziDiag programs and XDF definition files for various Italian motorcycles Speedzilla Forum thread on tuning Ducati ECUs
Innovate MTX-L wideband AFR gauge
Brad Black Ducati Tuning Reports, a wealth of information for anyone tuning Ducatis 

Editorial - The Future of OddBike

Merry Christmas to all my loyal OddBikers!

Sweet Jesus it's been a while since I've written anything.

It's not for lack of desire, it's due to a general lack of energy and inspiration following a day/week/month of working my ass ragged and trying to maintain some semblance of a personal life outside of my day job. Plus I got a new old car that needed sorting out over the course of many weekends.

I also spent some time rebuilding a 1993 GSXR 1100 WP in my living room, which I dubbed Project Vanilla Ice. I bought the bike in pieces through a friend of mine who found it on Kijiji in Red Deer, Alberta. It was complete and in fine shape aside from being torn apart and put into boxes, allegedly due to a transmission issue the owner never bothered to fix. I lucked out as the worst of it was a toasted clutch pack and some moderate dog wear on second gear. I had the whole thing restored in a few months and wheeled it out of my apartment just in time for the first month of Spring.

I immediately sold it after a mere 200 kms of shakedown rides when I came to the sudden realization that I have no desire to own a fat old Japanese superbike.

It could have made a neat restomod project but I had zero interest in putting any more money into it after I finished the rebuild. I quickly realized it was a pig-heavy brute that had the chassis tying itself into knots anytime the rider attempted to do anything other than accelerate in a straight line on a smooth road. It wasn't even exciting in its general terribleness, just rather soft and fluffy with wobbly vagueness coming on at anything more than city street pace. Even that once monstrous engine is pretty tame by modern standards. Not slow, but far from fast. It had no qualities endearing enough to make me want to keep it around. So off it went, netting me a modest profit and the satisfaction of rescuing a basket case from oblivion. It'll serve its new owner well.

I've been pondering the future of OddBike and my career as a freelance moto journalist. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to devote myself to my writing as I get older, my mind getting mushier as I approach my mid 30s. Add to that the exponential growth of the complexity of my profiles - my techniques have become more detailed and "professional" while my subjects have become more obscure, making the prospect of hammering out a quality article rather daunting. I have a half dozen stalled pieces sitting in limbo due to a simple lack of sources.

OddBike USA Tour 2015: Part VIII - Mandello's Finest

I get up early to head back to Pro Italia to make a pilgrimage to one of the dealers I've long been curious about. I've dealt with them in the past for parts orders for my 916, back in the fleeting days when the Loonie was worth a damn and it was cheaper for a Canadian to buy parts in the States. I also wanted an Aprilia mechanic to have a listen to the persistent top end tick in my Tuono, if only to quell my hyperactive imagination and remove the spectre of imminent mechanical catastrophe from my mind before I rode 2500 miles home.

Millepercento Moto Guzzis - Filling the Void

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Moto Guzzi has lost its way.

The boys at Mandello del Lario represent the oldest continuously operating brand in Europe in spite of operating in a near-constant state of flux due to catastrophic insolvency and unstable sales. Over the years the products emblazoned with the eagle crest have attempted to fill nearly every conceivable niche - sometimes successfully, more often not. Despite their attempts to crack into various categories with sometimes ill-advised oddball machines, Guzzis of old channelled a certain spirit that made them appealing to a certain type of rider who lusted for something peculiar. They were sporting machines, but not sportbikes. They were a bit rough and charmingly unpretentious, but refined enough to be pleasant. They were unique, but somehow familiar, and backed up by decades of heritage – passionate machines with antiquated guts. Moto Guzzi excelled at building the prototypical gentleman’s sports machine, exemplified by iconic models like the Le Mans, the V11, and the Daytona. They were not the fastest, or the most agile, or the most useable – but they were some of the most charming.

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But it was not to last. With their finances in shambles and profits needed to keep the lights on, a new strategy would be needed. It was a boring solution, with practicality and rationality taking precedence over passion. When the Piaggio Group took over Moto Guzzi in 2004, the company gradually phased out the true heirs to the company’s heritage in favour of dull, safe products that would appeal to the masses. Thus we ended up with wallflower machines like an asthmatic retro throwback, a chrome-addled American-esque cruiser, and a Teutonic-aping capital-A “Adventure Tourer”. Guzzi weathered their near-demise to fight another day, but at the cost of all that made them interesting.

Moto Guzzi V-Twin Off Roaders - Improbable Italian Enduros

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Considering our recent inundation of overweight, overly-complicated, quasi-enduro hair shirts produced by every manufacturer and their Chinese knockoffs, you'd be forgiven if you were to think that the overwrought poseur offroader (sorry, “Adventure Tourer”) was a recent innovation. If you thought these “should-be-an-uncompetitive-road-bike-but-it's-a-class-leader-because-we-made-the-suspension-too-tall” machines that clutter up showrooms and spend most of their time outside the nearest Starbucks - or beached on logging road ditches by weekend warriors - were concocted by the marketing gurus of the motorcycling world who sought to add yet another saleable category to our ever-growing gamut of useless niches, you'd only be half right. The improbable off-roader has been around for decades, gradually evolving into the two-wheeled barges we enjoy today, and few of these fauxduros were as unusual as the V-twin mud pluggers that rolled out of the Moto Guzzi works in Mandello del Lario.

Editorial - Renewal

Seeing as how I've recently been dealing with a particularly hardy case of writer's block and a few stalled articles, it is probably an appropriate time to delve into one of my trademark in-depth reflections on my somewhat unexciting existence. Yes, it's time for another rambling editorial here on OddBike, at least until I can clear the fog out of my head and start writing meaningful profiles of weird motorcycles again.

As some of my loyal readers will note (those who slogged through my epic USA Tour Travelogue, anyway) I recently announced my intention to bugger off and pack my ass off to Calgary, where I would start my life anew with a post in the motorcycle industry. I did indeed follow through on my threat, and this major moment of transition is what has kept me tied up and limited in my writing capacity in recent months. On reflection it seems a good opportunity to look back on how things have evolved in my life, and how OddBike has grown in the previous year. It was, as really loyal readers will note, the one year anniversary of this site in November 2013, so it seems appropriate to take this belated opportunity to address the development of this here experiment in quote unquote "motorcycle journalism".

Magni Sport 1200S - Italo-Asian Hybrid

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When it comes to exotic Italian motorcycles, few brands can claim the prestige and history of Magni. The bikes that have rolled out of Arturo Magni’s shop are the sort of two-wheeled art that become instant classics right out of the showroom. Magni's decades of experience with Gilera and MV Agusta during their respective glory years have informed the development of some of the most iconic and beautiful sports machines ever produced in Italy, powered by classic engines from MV and Moto Guzzi. Magnis are fast and elegant, and are powered by sonorous, red blooded Latin engines.

So when Magni introduced their swansong production model in 1999, it only made sense that it would be powered by a Japanese four yanked out of a Suzuki Bandit. Wait, what?

Moto Guzzi MGS-01 - Cooking Goose

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Booming Italian twin-cylinder trackday terrors have generally been the specialty of Ducati over the last 30 years; you might picture the odd orange Laverda parallel twin thrown in when that company is flirting with solvency, but generally Ducati is the go-to Latin track machine. Rarely do you picture a big, air-cooled, transverse V-twin out of Mandello de Lario thundering out of a corner and scything past the opposition. Moto Guzzi generally presents an air of staunch traditionalism, a sort of Italian BMW that is somehow more passionate than the Munich brand but far more rational than the exuberant offerings from Bologna. Guzzi riders are weathered, skilled old men who thump along the backroads, do their own repairs, and generally abstain from high-speed shenanigans. Or at least that’s the stereotype, one that was briefly blown into the weeds by the spectacularly uncharacteristic MGS-01 Corsa.