<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (an4rew @ Jul 4 2008, 04:51 PM)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Shouldn't the new engine been more fuel efficient.
It's suppose to be. But, it also makes MORE power, thus requiring more gas....
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE <div class='quotemain'>and i thought these bikes either had something on the dash so they knew how much fuel they had left, or an engine management system to automatically slow the bike down to make it to the end of the race.
At a track like Assen, all the bikes are fuel limited. The bikes' electronics vary the mixture from corner to corner, striving to provide the best compromise between smooth power (and lots of it!) and fuel efficiency. Here's what I suspect happened: The ECU's main fuel mapping/delivery loop most likely thinks in terms of injector pulse width. (It is not thinking "I need to inject 0.232 grams this time around.") It looks at engine sensors, throttle position, track position, gear, speed, etc., decides how much gas to squirt, and powers the injector for the appropriate length of time. Now, I'll betcha that
another, entirely separate software loop is worried about total fuel consumption. It adds up total pulse time and tries to figure out how much gas as been burned. I'll also bet that the fuel injection system on the new engine is significantly different, and that the MPG tables and values from the springer won't work. It all comes down to fine tuning the fuel consumption parameters, and I think someone at Honda either made a mistake entering values, or was working with bad data of some sort. Or maybe is was a hardware issue; something like the fuel injector rail running a few PSI over spec, resulting in a slightly richer mix? In any case, the computer should never allow the bike to run dry. It was probably doing a fine job of utilizing the remaining fuel, and was as surprised (if Pedrobot can be surprised, so can an embedded u-controller!) as Nicky when the motor went ....-up.
Sound believable?
