Ask MO Anything: Do Piggyback Tuners Affect Stock Electronic Rider Aids?
Ask MO Anything! Motorcycle-related is a good place to start, but the MO staff is amazingly well-versed, collectively, on a wide range of topics ranging from, well, okay we’re not really. But we try harder. Send your questions to: AskMoAnything@motorcycle.com.
Ask MO Anything: How to Insure Your Trike
Dear MOby,
I’m a regular reader from Australia and love your work. The articles are always helpful and relatively unbiased.
I have the new 2016 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R and wanted to install a Rapid Bike Racing unit to it. It’s a unit similar to a Power Commander, but it automatically adjusts the map as you ride and the conditions change.
My question for you is this: With the standard quickshifter, launch control and other electrickery, will installing the Rapid Bike nullify these features and result in me having to run the similar systems integrated in the Rapid Bike module?
I suppose this would affect many modern bikes now and I wouldn’t want to reduce the effectiveness of the in-built systems.
All the best,
Ryan Cullen
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Dammit, this is just the kind of question MOby lives in fear of. Who do we look like, Stephen Hawking? Are you sure you don’t want to know how to plug a tire or talk your mom into buying you a Hayabusa? Luckily, the interwebs makes it easy enough for even a MOron to go straight to the source; in this case that’s Yaman Turan, Rapid Bike’s U.S. rep. RB is based in Italy, and Mr. Turan says he’ll be heading over there for its 25th anniversary in September; at least you’re dealing with an established company even if it’s an Italian one. He says and we quote:
Great question. None of Rapid Bike systems, Racing or Evo, will interfere with any of the stock functions on the ZX-10R or any other models highly decorated with electronic functions such as TC, QS (quickshifter), EB (engine braking) or LC (launch control) – even though Rapid Bike itself has all or some of those functions already built in to work with our own add-on accessories.
I might also add that Rapid Bike Racing kits do not need add-on accessories such as “you tune” to manage the engine braking function. Also unlike the competitors, Rapid Bike Racing kits manage upper and lower injectors along with ignition signal and adaptive tuning all in one module; Rapid Bike EVO kits offer the same features but no ignition management. So in short, the answer is no, RB will not interfere with any of your bike’s built-in stock functions.
We also checked in with Chris Redpath at MotoGP Werks, who says he hasn’t heard anything derogatory about Rapid Bike, but that if money is an object, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check into having your bike’s stock ECU reflashed. Chris likes Flash Tune, in Orange, California, but the Rapid Bike system’s adaptive operating system does sound intriguing. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
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"it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check into having your bike’s stock ECU reflashed" -- before or after using Rapid Bike? If before, the question is "why?" And reflashed to what state? Re-flashing is not re-flushing..
From reading the description of the product it seems that it would override whatever came stock with the bike; Traction Control, Launch Control, etc. and affects most if not all the parameters that Flash Tune does. My advice to the "caller": leave it alone or make sure you have the original map available to reload. Otherwise, prepare to push your bike all the way to the dealership... or worse.