ECU upgrade with Cliff Jefferies' My ECU
Moto Guzzi Quota 1000 and Quota 1100 ES models
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Martin Standing sent me several articles directly related to his Moto Guzzi Quota 1100 ES. I am happy to host his articles. Enjoy!
Quota fuel injection is a pretty basic control circuit and not really a good example of a fuel injection system. The major influence for how much fuel is being injected is the throttle position (no mass flow sensor), modification to the fuelling is based on three other sensors; altitude, air temperature, oil temperature (effectively engine temperature).
I have read a lot of reports of Quotas and Sports that the owners say are fuelling very badly, mainly at low RPMs. My Quota did not run particularly well, but things started to get worse when I (tried) synchronising the the cylinders, instead of the low end RPM drive getting better, it seemed to get worse. The bike was also using about 7 L/100 km of fuel, the spark plugs a very black colour. But even more worryingly I had a nasty pinging or piston slap type noise at revs between ~2600 & 3300 RPM; time to look into the problems. The problems seemed to be aggravated further by the fitting of Mistral downpipes and collector box over the winter.
I had read a report from someone that said that the Quota could be set up to run tolerably well by good synchronisation of the cylinders. The recommendation was to wind in the air bypass screw to fully closed, never open it again and to achieve synchronisation using only the throttle offset screw. I could not get the cylinders in balance using this method. Also the balance seemed to be always shifting although nothing mechanical seemed to have changed. I could not field reasonable arguments for what I was experiencing and started to look for other problems, valve clearances, I also modified the camchain tensioner for the bow type as many people suggest this can be an issue.
Whilst researching potential problems, I found reference to the My ECU and started to to follow up on the ECU idea. I saw many good things written about the My ECU product offered by Cliff Jefferies. The My ECU can be bought complete or as a hobby kit (the original ECU or a donor ECU needs to be cannibalized for the air pressure sensor, connector and case). I bought the hobby kit and embarked on building the ECU. A few days later a complete ECU ready to be tried on the Quota. The ECU is fully programmable via an Android device, although that said, I actually do most of my editing in Notepad. More information can be found on the My ECU website. A map from my current Quota development is also available on the website (perhaps not perfect, but not a bad start).
The most significant difference from my Quota map to most of the maps on the My ECU website is that I have retarded the ignition timing in the earlier part of the rev range and have been increasing the fuel here too. This is may be due to the camshaft on the Quota, from what I can see, it has different part numbers to the Sport and perhaps more surprisingly it also seems different from the California, which I thought may well have a similar motor tune. The bike is returning about 5 L/100 km now, pulls beautifully from very low revs right the way through the rev range. I also have been able to close the air bypass screw and achieve very good synchronisation. I am very happy with the results of this modification. I am continuing to increase the fuel at the lower RPM experimenting whether it is possible to totally eradicate the noise at ~3000 RPM. It certainly seems to be improving, but I think at least in part the noise is mechanically based.
Last words on the My ECU: Whilst I was never a great carburetor tuner, but I could get by, I always had the feeling that if needed, I could play with the settings, fuel injection took this away in most cases. The closed black box means that most owners can do little to nothing in the way of adjustments. Now with the My ECU you can adjust the map, save several variants and download a new map to the ECU in a couple of minutes. When you ride away and realize that you have made a mistake in direction you can stop reload the old map or another variant. Total control and it is kind of fun too!