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I've been thinking about taking my bike for a dyno tune, and had been thinking performance only. Now with gas prices through the roof, I'm wondering if this can be done to maximize gas mileage.
Anyone had this done? Did it make much difference in your mileage or performance?
I had my 08 Ultra dynoed last fall when the Stage-1 work was done at the 1k service. Unfortunately they bike went into winter storage after that and I didn't get a chance to put some miles on it until this spring. I ran a few tanks of gas through first thing this spring and was getting around 31 mpg....too low for me, so I took the bike back in and they dyno tuned it again (at no cost to me) with any eye to milage instead of performance.....actually I told them I wanted to make sure it didn't run as hot as stock, so was willing to have a bit of a compromise. The resulting dyno run showed a loss of less than 1 hp, and a gain of nearly 1 fp torque and my milage went up to 38-39. I only have about 2700 miles on, so I'm hoping giving a couple thousand more the milage will go up a bit more.
My previous bike (VTX1800) was modified. It had a PC3USB with a custom mapped on the dyno. The PC3 would hold 3 maps and you could choose which one you wanted to run. I had one map for power and one map for crusing mpg. Worked great. difference between maps was about 4 mpg.
I just switched from TMAT to Super SERT, went from 28 MPG to 31 MPG, the bike runs great, thinking about taking it back to tuner to see if he can tweek it for some better MPG.
Just get a PCIII or SERT and find the best tuner in your area and tell them you want your bike tuned for better mileage. I average 45mpg on the highway at 75mph riding 2 up. Around town in 35-40 depending on wrist...lol...or traffic.
Getting better mileage with a PCIII installed is a matter of tweaking the cruise range, and doing this will not affect overall performance. Go to this thread and scroll down 21 messages:
By making the same adjustments your mileage should increase considerably. Compared to my original Fuel Moto map, which I can switch to on the fly using the optional map switch, the difference is about 7 mpg at a moderate cruise...43 vs. 50 mpg. Others who've made these changes have realized up to 10 mpg improvement. Read the caveats in the linked message, as I have an oil cooler that controls peak temperatures. I can't say how oil temps will read without a cooler as I've received no feedback. I have a similar setup with Rush mufflers with Fuel Moto custom baffles, Fuel Moto AC, and PCIII.
Don't make any changes to any value over 40% TP, and my example shows up to only 20% TP. Doing so won't impact mileage noticeably but will affect performance.
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