Background:
One of the few things I have disliked about STrudel has been the rough fueling at minimal throttle openings, aparrently a common issue with injected bikes and also apparently a result of manufacturer settings intended to appease the emmissions testers.
The rough throttle made crawling in slow traffic less than ideal, and when taking corners and twisties I needed to allow for the uneasiness in the power delivery coming off idle. I added a G2 throttle tamer which helped and made it manageable. All the while, though, I still felt this was a characteristic that I really rather not live with as it was a stain on an otherwise highly enjoyable motorcycle. I even found myself pondering a test ride on a K1600 :-(
Note that I'm talking in past tense. I decided to put STrudel forward as a guinea-pig in the name of medical science and I thought you guys might be interested.
The general concensus from the forum was that you can waste a lot of money trying unsuccessfully to tune an ST, and that this was something that everyone had just learned to live with. Also, the service dept at teammoto just shrugged their shoulders and said "that is just the way they are", but I didn't think much of the teammoto guys and I decided to hunt out a 'real mechanic' for my next service.
I came across a forum recommendation for Motorcycle Mad at Brendale, and I noticed plenty of good facebook reviews so I thought I'd give Mick a go. I popped around to book in for a minor service, and being rather impressed by his dyno rig I popped the question about the throttle response.
"Yeah you can fix it. You'll need a Power Commander."
"What's a Power Commander?"
"I'll show you ... <hits the computer> .... Oh @#!@#. looks like they dont make them for the ST any more. Hang on .... <a few more minutes of googling and a few phone calls> ... Here you go. Bazzaz makes one for your bike. I can get one up in a couple of days".
This is the device, and yep, they list the ST1300 up to 2012. Mine's a 2014 but that sounded close enough.
http://www.bazzaz.net/index.php/fuel-control/z-fi-fuel-controllerThere was not much on the web about fitting one to ST1300 but I did find one encouraging report from a guy in the US who took the plunge and installed one himself:
http://www.st1300.us.com/showthread.php?p=42756So I got back to Mick and asked him to get one up for me at $550 delivered. When it arrived the box was labelled "ST1300 2002-2014" which was encouraging.
Mick quoted $250 to install the Z-Fi, including a throttle body sync ("may as well do it while I'm in there"). That sounded like pretty good value.
I could have spent just the $800 and been done with it, but I decided to go all out and I got Mick to fit a high-flow air filter and put Mr. STrudel on the dyno.
The result ??? Haha. Not telling