Thanks to Ian from VPW for hooking me up with this. Before I go on. I'll just add that I am pretty mechanically inept and DO NOT enjoy wrenching my own bike (sorry, I like riding but wrenching kinda pisses me off!).
This is a basic little EFi piggy back unit, allows you to richen/lean up the mixture easily and without a laptop, the unit is self contained, unlike the the Vance and Hines Fuelpak, you don't download a map that matches your specs, you can change settings on the the fly.. although the base map is very good (more on that), I'm guessing this unit really suits people who want to do pipes, aircleaner and maybe cams (lets be honest.. thats 99% of us). Plug and play baby.. plug and play.
My bike is a 2011 XL1200X Sportster 48. 1500ks on the clock, screamin' beagle slipons, no ac mod (yet)
Tiny tiny box, has the unit, velcro sticky, zip ties and about 5km of cabling!
Instructions are easy to follow, installation in theory is pretty easy, it has plugs for the O2 sensors and the fuel injectors rather than plugging into the CPU.. this is wher it gets messy.
Installation involves lifting the tank, disconnecting the battery, running the wiring up the backbone, plugging into the front O2 sensor, the rear and the two fuel injectors.. Harleys wiring is shit to start with, a horrible rats nest of things that don't really fit very well.. and this is what I didn't like, the PTF piggy back off each of these plugs, meaning you now have two plugs where there once was one.. not the end of the world but uneeded messyness.. I hate messy wiring and this just adds to it.. on top of that the spaces to jam all that wiring in is so tight in places (the rear O2 sensor is the main problem), I have serious concerns about the long term life of them. A much better solution would have been a CPU side bus plug.
So, nothing wrong with the unit itself, but I would would have designed it differently (having said that there may be reasons for what they have done), it fits just fine under the battery cover though.
But.. How does it run?
Perfect, the bike started up with zero problems. even though I have no real mods aside from the pipes, it runs beautifully.. truly beautiful. Low end is grunty, throttle is snappy and power delivery is smooth and linear, no more low throttle stumbling, no hesitation.. more power? no idea, but the bike feels stronger and just 'right'. It now happily sits on 80 in 5th (used to lug like a bastard), 60 in 3rd is happy, it cruises at 100 very smoothly now, being stuck in heavy slow moving traffic this morning the bike was smooth with no lurching or stumbling, actually feels like its not working anywhere near as hard, it may be in my mind, but the exhaust sounds smoother and deeper.. in all, just smooth and linear, doesn't feel like its struggling anywhere, just feels more relaxed. And no screwing around with laptops
Best $300 I've spent.
A/C will be here in a few weeks, will be interesting to see how that changes things.
They are good little units. Last year I bought a similar rebadged dobek tfi and was extremely pleased with it. Like you say, the responsiveness is a lot better. You will notice a big improvement again when you put a high flow a/c on.
That;s a great price too. Mine cost me close to $500.
Unfortunately mine is no longer on the bike. A few months back my bike started running really bad. The dealer initially thought it was the tuner. To cut a long story short after the dealer trying a lot of things to fix the problem, It was only after they fitted a new Screamin Eagle Race Tuner and put it on the dyno that it was evident that it was not a problem with the TFI but the spark plug leads were stuffed. Expensive way to buy new spark plugs leads.
The bike runs different with the sceamin eagle race tuner compared to the TFI. The thing that has me confused is whilst my bike now runs smoother, it went like a cut snake with the TFI and was a lot more responsive and reved lower at higher speeds.
The TFI did however take a while to drop revs when pulling up at lights and the fuel consumption took a slight hit..
Have fun pal.
Where do ya get it? And will it suit a Fat bob? Ta. pete.
