Staff Bikes
More models, more miles and more mods.
Kawasaki Ninja 400 Kawasaki H2 SX Yamaha YZF-R1M Suzuki GSX-S1000 KTM 1290 GT Honda CB1000R
Get a fuelling module, they said. It will be fun, they said. Well ladies and gentlemen, I can assure that it’s not the walk in the park I hoped it would be, which means I’ve mostly spent this month swearing, drinking lots of tea and failing at being a respectable mechanic…
So what’s the story? Well as you all probably know, when installing a new pipe, and indeed even more so with a full system, it will alter your bike’s output and therefore require a remap to refine the running – which is where this tasty little number from Rapid Bike comes in, as all you have to do is plug it in and let it work its own wizardry.
With three options on the market, I opted for the most complex road offering to get the best output, in the hope that I could make some pretty tasty gains, and although Rapid Bike have a load of certified dealers country-wide who can do the dirty-work, I decided to give it a go myself to see if I could get it done in under a couple of hours. Bad move.
Having done the odd bit of work on race bikes throughout the years it’s a surprise how much tat there is in the way on a road bike; unnecessary panels, loads of wiring, and big chunks of plastic among other bits always seem to be perfectly in the way. It took me over an hour to get the whole tank assembly off and when I did I realised that it was a pretty complex job hooking up some of the electronics; okay the instructions were reasonably clear but for the complex Rapid Bike, it does take a bit of chopping up, which wouldn’t be ideal when I have to give the Kawasaki back in a few months. So yes, I was defeated, with bugger all to show for two and a half hours’ work. I know next time to definitely go with the easy one – or get someone who has more of a clue about these sort of things to give it a go. In all honesty, the Ninja wasn’t too hard to pull about and when it is everything is nicely in reach; being such a small capacity with no exuberant electronics means that things aren’t completely cramped together. Every cloud.
But then again, all was not lost. In order to make it feel like I’d actually achieved something, I did give the air filter a little clean up and removed the baffle from the exhaust, so now the little Ninja is incredibly noisy. Obnoxiously, in all honesty. But it’s okay, my neighbours don’t like me anyway.