My website making skills are pretty much crap as you can tell, not to mention I ramble too much... but I appreciate it. Just so I'm clear, my intention there is not to promote any products or make money off affiliate links. I have a job, and it isn't Chinese motorcycles.
I am mostly just amused to see what other bikes / automotive applications they took ideas from. Time has been short lately, but I have a lot of little updates I need to post about the brakes.
That is one thing I would love to see improved on the DLX I guess, the front brake pad sweep on the rotor. They put a much bigger (outer diameter) rotor on the Hawk ... yet the pad only sweeps about half of it. Finding a deeper caliper + making a bracket to utilize it would be a fun project. Especially with good EBC pads, stainless lines and quality fluid my bike brakes well... but it still pains me to see that front rotor so under utilized.
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I use the bike same as you, just going down old abandoned rail lines, dirt roads and stuff like that. I've been riding a long time, and I've had a couple car vs. bike incidents that make me not want to street ride much anymore.
I have about ~400 miles on it now. I bought this over a Honda CR250L if you can believe that. It wasn't really the money that held me back, but I knew I'd only be riding this 2-3 times a month at best. I love Honda's, but thats a lot of money to have sit in the garage doing nothing. Not to mention my local Honda dealer is ridiculous, and wont budge off MSRP on bikes they've had sitting on the showroom floor 2+ years.
How cold is cold where you're at? I am in Florida (Central, East Coast) and like only about 10 feet above sea level. So basically the most optimal conditions ever. My bike runs VERY rich at cold idle, like you can smell the unburnt fuel big time. It has stalled once on me, but never bucks. As a matter of habit, I always let my air cooled bikes warm up a couple minutes before I take off down the road anyway. Being you're in Indiana, I can only imagine that weather only makes the ECU run even richer than here when its dead cold.
My suspicion is the factory was a little too over aggressive with cold warm up strategy to try and get the catalytic converter lit up? Again, that is me guessing. The other possibility is they are over aggressive with fuel on the cylinder head temp enrichment. IE: the cooler the head, the more fuel... just like you would do on a water cooled engine.
One tuning issue I ran into this summer was: when the cylinder head temp got HOT (was really hot out, and I'd been whipping the bike) I could feel a pretty drastic reduction in timing until I drove it slow and on the road for ~5 mins. Like you could literally just feel the bike fall on its face power wise, and then after it cooled down power came back. I should put an oil cooler on the bike is what that told me.
The other thing my DLX does is backfire, even when warmed up, on deceleration/coasting in gear. So something is up with the tuning on deceleration fuel cutoff (DFCO). It is a very Harley-esq backfire, for lack of a better description. I always run a spark arrestor anyway, but I am not a big fan of backfires like that if I can help it.
I just don't know much about MT05.x tuning or tables to know how we could fix some of these minor issues. This is kinda why I'm toying with the idea of converting the bike over to a Speeduino. Not because the MT05 is terrible, but its a bit of a blackbox. It's actually really surprising to me how little is out there given how much this ECU is used on power equipment (including lawn mowers!).
Overall, the bike is tuned OK ... but there are tweaks that would help people in cooler or higher elevations I'm sure.
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Originally Posted by old_airhead
Hey Gimpster, I've had my '20 Hawk DLX for about a month now and have just turned 350 miles. I use it for exploring the many gravel roads in the nearby national forest. The only issue I have with this bike is that when cold it runs like absolute crap. Much bucking and surging from off idle to quarter throttle. Openings above half throttle seem ok, but I don't really like to do that with a cold engine. When the engine warms up it runs a lot better, but some slight surging is still noticeable. Since I've never had a Chinese bike before I was wondering if this was normal for these. I have two fuel injected bikes in the garage and both run fine when cold (both German). Is this something that can be cured or should I just live with it? I figured when I bought the bike the EFI would be 'Look, but don't touch'.
Just discovered your web site, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Thanks.
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