I've been reading the forums (CH and ADV) and I will say most air box solutions look like they've been covered for offroad / REAL adventure riding. I understand the purpose of the foam filter but I want to keep the setup as stock as I can while ensuring a good seal. I think the paper element will be fine for my purpose. I put 12k miles on my NC700X and the air filter looked fine. My Strada will be run in the same conditions. My use of the bike will be 99% street/highway riding. It may once in a blue moon go on gravel roads. To be more direct...has anyone sealed the air box halves and retained the stock filter assembly with good results?
Did you check the 3D Printer filter cage that Highfive and AmE came up with on the ADV thread? It's in the index thread. Sealing the box is one issue. But, the other is the way the stock filter mounts. Since it's on the door, and is missing some design, it does not seal completely. So, with the paper element filter in it's stock mounted configuration, it does not do a lot of good and sealing the airbox and keeping that wouldn't make sense. If you never follow anyone else on gravel roads, you might be fine. I've got about 5k on mine of primarily road miles and it's OK. I do have the UNI filter from Australia sitting on my kitchen table though, and the 3D printer filter cage on the FedEx truck slated to arrive tomorrow. If I was going to stay on paved, I'm not sure I would have bothered, but a trip this summer made me reconsider. The Pod-mod for me was a no go due to the hacked together feel of it, but the 3D printed piece gives a factory finish and doesn't increase the intake noise like an open airbox would.
The pod mod doesn't increase air box noise. It does increase the lower noises, sort of a growl. In any case the 3d mod information will be found under "Part A" about 1/3 of page down: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=24352468&postcount=4293
I just did the pod mod to mine. It definitely makes a bit more deep noise. Sounds nice, I think. Except for the fact that the airbox pieces now rattle a bit. I need to find a good way to seal them together. What did you use? I also probably need to trim more off of the elbow to get the pod lower away from the edge of the cut-out.
I'd like to add some more. Has anyone else doing the pod mod noticed significantly increased intake air temperature? The IAT sensor is basically pressed against the uni filter after the modification. The filter gets hot from the throttle body, and on a nice cool and humid 65f day, my bike's IAT reading on the dash (I have not performed any spoofer mod yet) is somewhere around 95-100 degrees F. This would cause the motor to run even more lean, would it not? Or will the ECU adjust somehow? I was under the impression the IAT sensor tied to the ECU to help it decide fuel/air mixture ratios.
I did the pod mod but I am running the wukka which relocates the IAT up front on the side panel. Mine always indicates low temps.
Hmm. I'm going to do the Eruption fix soon. I'll add the 8 thermistors to see if it drops the temps enough. I may go further. Either way, the ~30f drop in temp reading ought to do the trick to at least get the IAT sensor performing closer to original or below. Would having a false high-temp reading cause any adverse effects? I haven't noticed anything yet, but all I did was let the bike run through the ECU reset at idle after finishing some changes to the pod mod.
I used Gorilla Tape. I cleaned the two halves of the air box with lacquer thinner, dried it and taped it. Tough stuff. I simply remove the screws from the small hatch and hinge the piece over using the duct tap. Works fine. As for as resetting the ECU in my experience (yours may very) I have reset the ECU prior to running the bike each and every time. Eruption Mod and for the POD Mod, I reset the ECU (removed the red leads from the battery and let the ECU sit for 10 minutes, then reconnected the wiring and turned the key on and restarted the bike without touching the throttle and let the bike run for 10 minutes before turning it off again).
Dr Z, I have heard that some efi techs use one more step to reset. When you turn the key on, and before starting, crack the throttle to wide open twice.
Can't that only be reset/ changed manually via the set-screws that the unit is mounted with? The base has curved slots to allow the unit to be turned....pretty much like the old distributors of yesteryear.
That's what I was thinking too. I was just wondering what blipping the throttle full open would do otherwise.
Maybe to calibrate/sync it. The TPS is just a rheostat so to speak. Variable resistance depending on the position. Since the position of the housing is fixed, and the butterfly can be altered to different openings, the computer would need to know the baseline or idle, so when you crack the throttle, it knows how much fuel to inject. The stepper motor, controls the idle, bypassing the butterfly. That way if the computer detects a surge or lull, it will adjust air flow and fuel to compensate and run smooth, never moving the throttle butterfly. I checked into this when some one was talking about a hanging idle. That could be related to the stepper motor. All this does is control air that goes around the butterfly using ports in the TB. Similar to an EGR valve but using an electric motor to run a screw in and out, not a magnetic solenoid. Anyway, the full throttle movement with key on may calibrate the TPS to the computer, and the subsequent 10 minutes of running could then be setting up all the rest of the stuff and logging a "steady state" so to speak, then as you drive more and more, the learning of the ecu would make the fine adjustments to your driving style. That is why you do not touch the throttle in the 10 minute tune, (my best guess) as the computer figures out how to adjust the stepper, and fuel injection using engine temp, AIT signals, RPM, TPS etc etc etc. It almost makes sense to me now. So any time you change exhaust or air filter or monkey with anything, probably best to do the 10 minute tune. I think just bringing it up to temp, fan coming on a couple times is probably a better way to gauge vs 10 minutes. Wipe out any learned parameters and reset to a baseline, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. (for now anyway)
I know when I owned a Buell, just about the first solution to any problem was to reset the TPS. There was guy who sold cables on a forum and someone had developed free software to perform all of the ECU adjustment fuctions. It was a 2 minute procedure running some code in the ECU and involving holding the throttle open and closed to allow recalibration. With the Harley engines, the bikes vibrated themselves out of adjustment often.
I've had very good success with the K&N Filter. I have run it very hard (Many 10+ hour days on the TET and in the mountains), in very dusty conditions, and found the inside/clean side of the air box to stay free of grit. I have done about 5k miles with it and plan to long haul it. The bike has about 8k miles with no issues--though I have had to clean it a lot (2 times already) because of the dusty conditions I have been riding in. I pulled the box open once (huge pain) and it was a little dusty, though I think that was from the first 2k miles with the stock filter. I wiped it out a bit and plan to check the air box innards again when I hit 11-12k miles and do the valves again. I know using a K&N and not being worried don't really follow the party line, but I have been carefully checking the clean side of the air box, just past the filter, and it's working fine for me.
Just keep in mind that everyone that has found dirty throttle bodies have also had clean air box areas by the filter. No dirt on the clean side of the filter means very little.
