Pinging cure.....maybe

[Guest jimjib]

I think along with me, many people here have had pinging problems when the temps get warm. The beemer guys suffer from the same fate but... a few guys have recently tested the "water in the intake" thing to see if would do the trick.....here is some stuff gleaned off the adv gs board.....

 

"I've personally poured two liters through each jug of my old R80G/S, taking about five minutes each. No need to worry about the water in the oil breaking down and turning to cid if you do the water cure just BEFORE an oil change. (Duh.) It works. It is not harmful. I simply turned the intake elbows up and poured the water in with my thumb stuck in the end of the bottle to stiffle the flow. The trick is to balance the throttle with the water flow to keep the motor running at about half of redline."

 

"OK, I tried this out last night. Seems to have cured the knock I was noticing since the last fill-up at a rural station. It was around 8 PM when I finished, so it was starting to cool-off. We'll see how it does at noon today. So far with engine hot, there is no knock at WOT 6th

gear, 50 MPH. This would have definatly knocked before."

 

 

Here is another guy that just cured his pining with the water spray method....on his oilhead GS.

 

"Took a "long cut" home from work last night, up a long fairly steep grade. I could not make the bike ping at all. No question that it would have done before the water treatment."

[Guest jimjib]

More good info from the beemer board

 

"As has been said, it is very easy. Use the vacuum fitting on the bottom of each throttle body.

 

If you really want to derive maximum effect, rig up some tubing to a water bottle and a small valve. Run a hose between the two TBs and drape it over the tank. Put a t-fitting in it midway and run another hose through a little valve and into a water bottle taped to your tank. The little valve can be the kind for the tubing for your refrigerator icemaker. Use the valve to set the flow rate under the desired conditions and a hemostat or clothespin to turn the flow on and off.

 

You can easily open the 'flow valve' while accelerating hard at medium RPM. This is where the added effect comes. Not much air and fuel is moving through the cylinders when the engine is merely spinning the flywheel. When accelerating hard at low inlet vacuum (high Manifold Absolute Pressure) The engine is moving nearly its full swept volume (1130cc) of air, and cylinder pressures are among their highest. Put some water in there under those conditions to get more bang for your distilled water buck. Just be sure to pinch off the line before rolling off the throttle.

 

Rig it permanent to come on at full throttle to limit pinging and increase power. This was a common practice for supercharged radial aircraft engines in military aircraft when using takeoff or pursuit power settings.

 

And we are running a two-cylinder radial.

 

Kidding aside, the only issue of significant concern is the dilution of the crankcase oil. But you would have to burn a couple of tanks of gas along with an equal or greater volume of water, all at low engine operating temperature, to have any negative oil-dilution effect. You see, gasoline when burned in a good fuel/air mixture has always produced nearly an equal quantity of water vapor. 1 gallon of gasoline exhaust gas could be condensed to get nearly the same amount of water. So all of that water has always been present as the result of combustion."

[Cliff]

Two different solutions there. The first is a one off water addition, the second is talking a permanent installation.

I can't see the first one doing anything more than perhaps decoking the cylinder.

The second is more interesting. Perhaps add another pump and some injectors and a few more outputs to My16M and you can have permanent and accurate water injection. If we do the same again with NO ...

[Guest jimjib]

Im watching the thread with interest to see how many guys actually try the first method. I have heard of guys doing this with cars but these are the first posts I have seen whrere guys are actually doing it with bikes So for I think there have been two guys and both have gotten good results. Pining has been a serious problem on the 1150 oilhead beemers....If carbon build up on the top of the piston is what is causing the problem and the water treatment knocks it off and doesnt harm anything, I am going to give this a shot on the guzzi.

 

I have had some luck with redline injection cleaner on my beemer but it hasnt seemed to really cure the problem on the guzzi.

[RichMaund]

Coke deposits on the piston and head can lead to hot spots that cause pre-ignition (Pinging). Trickling water in while you run the motor can clean off the deposits.

 

BUT!!!!!!!!! (There's always a "but".)

 

The deposits that come loose and snag on a valve seat and stick keeping the valve from seating well and perhaps causing burning of the seat. Little bits of the coke can travel down into the sides of the piston and foul a ring or cause scoring.

 

The technique can work to clean coke deposits. But it has a downside as well! No such thing as a free lunch!

[dlaing]

The technique can work to clean coke deposits. But it has a downside as well! No such thing as a free lunch!

So, than is the sure way to pull the head and decoke it?

(and then dyno tune it such that you do not build up carbon?)

[RichMaund]

Pulling the heads and bead blasting them will clean them up nice.

Cleaning the piston top is a bit of a chore as you don't want the stuff getting packed into the clearance between the cylinder wall & piston. Have to so it slow and easy.

Todays fuels burn very cleanly and produce little in coking. If you're one of those guys who likes to add a bit of diesel fuel or some miracle oil to your fuel, you can expect coke to form. If you have worn valve guides or rings and your engine is using oil, you be making some coke deposits.

 

An engine in good tune with little oil consumption has nothing to worry about.

 

Water will clean it out violently and suddenly. I already brought up the downside. I prefer to just buy a bottle of Techtroline from Chevron a couple times a year and treat the gas in the tank with this cleaner. Then go on a nice hiway run and let that tank of gas slowly remove some/any deposits. How does it work? Hell if I know. I've never had to pull the V11S's head. Can it hurt? No.

 

My bike had the minor pinging problem on very hot days when under heavy acceleration when new. The problem is a bit less now that the engine is well broken in and better tuned. (PCIII) So......

I either have no coke deposits worth worrying about.

The bike came with coke deposits and they are now mostly cleaned out.

 

You figure it out. I'd be more worried about coke forming in my Ural than my Guzzi.

[Guest tmartin]

Another solution to your carbon build-up problem (causes pinging/knock) is to add Techron (Chevron Oil Co.) to your gas tank. This stuff chemically breaks down the carbon deposits while you ride including the ones on the backs of the intake valves. The chemical causes the carbon to become unstable (brittle) and it flakes off as the engine is running. I used this additive when I was an auto tech and it works quite well. Techron is sold by Toyota and Mercedes dealers under their brand name for the same purposes but you can get it at Kmart or Target for about $4 per bottle. It may also be called “Pro Guard” fuel injector cleaner and it has Techron in it. Don’t add too much to one tank of gas and DON’T leave it in the tank for any extended time period (it likes to eat rubber hoses, etc.). Use it when you will be going through a tank of gas in one ride. Should take about 4 tankfulls to reduce or eliminate your pinging/knocking problem.

[dlaing]

So the techron will probably cause the coke to flake off in smaller pieces than the water treatment, and therefore be less likely to damage the valves???

[Guest Jeff Kelland]

The raw water in the intake is an old trick used when big old worn out american auto engines loaded up the head and piston with carbon and developed both hotspots as pointed out by Rich, and also raised the effective compression ratio. The raw water added in amounts greater than could be atomized or turned into steam literally beat the carbon buildup out of the chambers. Think heavy hammering noises. It was pretty effective. Terrible thing if you got carried away and hydraulically locked a cylinder though, think bent connecting rod / squished rod bearing. Todays engines in good condition do not get carboned up to this extent. The thin carbon layer on the piston crown acts as a very important heat insulator protecting the crown. Preignition and detonation should be contolled by proper fueling, proper timing, and good combustion chamber design. Get 1 wrong in todays emission controlled world and we have problems. The cures, lower the compression ratio, retard the timing, richen the fuel mixture, or cool the incoming charge. Water injection as used by aircraft engines (atomized water/alcohol mix) does 2 of these, it cools the charge and effectively richens the mixture by displacing air. It is added at times when the engine is under maximum loads preventing damaging detontion and power robbing preigition. Will it work on our engines? Yes it will. If somebody were to explore this as a solution carefully and thoughtfully I believe it could be very effective. I know some hotrod guys have played with windshield washer pumps and resevoirs to try this. My 2cts. jeff

[emry]

Water injection is very common with high boost turbo systems to prevent detonation. The system is very similar to a windshield washer set up that uses a nitrous nozzle for the mist. The mist can drop intake temps by as much as 50 degrees. While this may correct the problem it doesn't really fix it. I still think that a good custom fuel and spark map would solve the problems. Have they released the PCIII R yet for our bikes?

[gthyni]

I still think that a good custom fuel and spark map would solve the problems. Have they released the PCIII R yet for our bikes?

not according to the 2003 catalog I downloaded from

http://www.powercommander.com/

 

BUT Ultimap seems to have that capability, check:

http://www.fuelinmoto.com.au/

 

Ultimap should be cheaper than a custom PCIII mapping

since no hardware is required just a workshop with

a dynobench and the Ultimap software.

Ultimap remaps the Marelli 15M instead of adding a secondary computer.

[Guest JohnInNH]

PC-III R for the Le Mans

 

I heard they will NOT be making one for us! I'm SOoooo bummed!

 

This would have been fantastic. I would shell out the $ for a R version to replace the PC-III I have now in a heartbeat. No qualms no regrets no questions. I would get it before I bought food for the week.

 

I'd want one for my car too! Having control of timing and fuel would be TITS!...

 

If the PC folks polled we owners they may be amazed at how many of us would buy the R version.... Let alone the people who are waiting in the wings for the R version to come out before they get one.

 

If they can make one NOT having one is foolish. IMHO. The loss of $ would more than be offset by the growth it would generate. People who own the bikes which use the computer we do, have a lot of influence. Difficult to measure.

[al_roethlisberger]

Well, for all those interested(myself included for the dual-plug project) we could just drop them an email asking for it....

 

Todd Eagan told me that they are currently "not interested" in making an "R" version, but if they got enough emails..... who knows??

 

I'm going to drop them one as I write this

 

 

Powercommander Contacts

 

If you are hoping PC will come out with an "R" version to control timing, drop them one as well

 

al