So...I was pursuing some threads on VFRworld.com and came across some thoughtful and articulate posts from BIKenG, whom I later came to know as Ken Gillette from the UK. In his posts, Ken referenced a VFR1200 project of his. The photos caught my eye and upon reaching out to Ken, he graciously supplied me with an in-depth account of his custom build, which he calls eVo4.
Ken's background includes 50 years of riding, wrenching, racing and teaching motorcycling. He's organized European riding trips and once worked for Honda UK, running the Technical Training Schools. The latter helps to explain the great lengths and technical creativity employed in bringing this project from a 2012 insurance write-off to the well-sorted naked seventh-gen Interceptor we see here.
The technical wizardry list is long — I'll included it as a "Read More" at the bottom of this post for the technically curious. Reverting a modern faired bike into a naked is no small task. Ken moved or eliminated many electronics and added a Puig headlight fairing. The front suspension is an Ohlins unit from a Kawasaki ZZR1400 and the rear shock a VFR Ohlins. The front calipers are Brembo radial units spec'd for the Hayabusa and wheels OEM VFR1200. An Akrapovic muffler is mounted with a custom mid-pipe, tuned with a DynoJet PC-V. More additions include electronic cruise control, heated grips and an instrument pod from the VFR1200X.
As a lover of naked bikes and, apparently, a hopeless techno-geek, Ken's biggest challenge was integrating the electronics made necessary by the many changes and additions. His skills and tenacity resulted in the unique and attractive custom seen here. For all the myriad details, click "Read More" below the photos.
Thanks to Ken for sharing his beautiful bike.
(click on an image to enlarge)
The technical wizardry list is long — I'll included it as a "Read More" at the bottom of this post for the technically curious. Reverting a modern faired bike into a naked is no small task. Ken moved or eliminated many electronics and added a Puig headlight fairing. The front suspension is an Ohlins unit from a Kawasaki ZZR1400 and the rear shock a VFR Ohlins. The front calipers are Brembo radial units spec'd for the Hayabusa and wheels OEM VFR1200. An Akrapovic muffler is mounted with a custom mid-pipe, tuned with a DynoJet PC-V. More additions include electronic cruise control, heated grips and an instrument pod from the VFR1200X.
As a lover of naked bikes and, apparently, a hopeless techno-geek, Ken's biggest challenge was integrating the electronics made necessary by the many changes and additions. His skills and tenacity resulted in the unique and attractive custom seen here. For all the myriad details, click "Read More" below the photos.
Thanks to Ken for sharing his beautiful bike.
(click on an image to enlarge)
"In brief, the forks are Ohlins for the Kawasaki ZZR1400 as they were suitable length and the correct diameters to suit the top and bottom yokes - or so I thought. I mistakenly believed that at the lower yoke they were 54mm same as most other Honda USD forks (i.e. Showa), but in fact the VFR1200F uses Kayaba forks which are 55mm. I only discovered this a few days prior to taking it on its first European trip and with no time to sort an alternative solution, I just used a 0.5mm Al. shim wrapped around each forkleg at the lower yoke. But that works perfectly and so I’ve had no real need to change it. I also have some Hayabusa forks which are the same 50/55 as the VFR’s Kayabas, but are shorter so I’d need to lengthen them some how. As I said, in the end the shims stayed there.
The axle for all the above forks is 25mm and although the ZZR forks would normally be spaced at 216mm, the 214m spacing Honda use just offsets the callipers slightly compared to the discs which is no actual problem and the Kawasaki axle was able to cope with the variation. I just had to make my own wheel spacers to suit.
The rear shock is Ohlins’ unit for the VFR1200F although I mounted the reservoir bracket slightly differently to clear the hugger. They claim you cannot use a hugger with their shock.
Wheels and discs are OEM VFR1200F, but the callipers are 109mm spacing Brembo radials for the Hayabusa (cheap :-), with 32mm pistons all round. I previously used 30/32mm Brembos from a FireBlade SP, but then swapped those to my FireFighter to go with the SP Ohlins I had obtained for that.
Front wheel uses a VFR800 8th Gen ABS ring which I was able to fit to the wheel and was the correct diameter to suit the Wheel Speed Sensor location of the Ohlins (for Kawasaki) forks. Unfortunately that ring has a different number of slots so a Speedo Healer is used to correct the signal back to what the VFR’s ECU expects. If I switch to the Hayabusa forks I will need to make my own WSS mount and so will make a special ABS ring with the original no. of slots and be able to eliminate the Speedo Healer.
Every nut or bolt that could be was replaced by Al or Ti versions as appropriate and there are several special and unique parts I machined from scratch to suit the bike.
Front screen is a Puig Alien as that was the exact look I was after. I was fortunate to find a couple of them as Puig no longer manufacture them. I was also fortunate to find I was able to mount the screen on the OEM fairing bracket using the mirror mount position and also a custom bracket for the bottom of the fairing. I had to grind off part of the bracket to clear one of the headlights though. I’d like to replace the halogen projector lights with LED as they ought to be smaller and leave more clearance to the bracket, but not found any suitable ones yet.
The tank side covers are cheap pattern parts off eBay that I cut and re-shaped to remove the air scoops that normally connect to the large side fairings. Previously (Phase 2) I made a couple of trim pieces to fit onto unaltered tank covers, but these big scoops didn’t look great so I bought some cheap covers and hacked them to suit what I wanted.
The exhaust is the Akrapovic for the (Kawasaki again :-) ZX10R as that was exactly the look I wanted and was short enough to miss any panniers if fitted. Akrapovic offer 2 for the VFR1200, a low mount to miss the panniers and one that angles up slightly more which looks better, but fouls the panniers. In any case, I much prefer the shape of their ZX-10R one. I had already estimated that it should bolt straight onto the original mounting location off the pillion footrest so bolted it on and had a link pipe made to connect it from there to the OEM outlet just after the cat. This exhaust looks great and surprisingly, despite it small size, is NOT loud. Sounds good though.
A Dynojet PC-V is in place with 2 switchable maps, but I really should get it on a dyno to optimise the settings to suit the exhaust etc.
Also there’s heated handlebars and an electronic Cruise Control which is made easily possible due to the VFR1200 being Ride By Wire. However the CC is actually a recent addition as for various reasons I just didn’t get around to it for a couple of years.
There is also a QuickShifter with downshift/blipper capability although that latter has not yet been implemented.
The most complicated and time consuming aspect of the whole process was the electronics. Not just their inherent complexity but also because you cannot obtain the information you need to do this sort of thing. This is something I hate about the way everything is sold these days. The buyer is expected to hand over the money while being told very little about the product. You are not supposed to know anything about it. Dealers are kept in the dark and in this case even Honda UK did not actually know the details of the systems on this bike. Anyway…
There’s quite a lot of extra wiring for additional switches and devices like bar heaters and CC etc. and my own logic for the lighting so no headlight when engine not running, just the original LED position lights in the mirrors. Then once engine is running some small but bright LED running lights in the front screen also illuminate. These can be switched over to headlights as required. I hate having to have headlights on all the time so I made sure I had the ability to turn them off. But I like the LED running lights so can alternate between those and the headlights. With the OEM position lights, they make a nice V at the front. :-)
Something that was immediately apparent when starting out was that the ABS module had to be moved. With no fairings, it would have been unacceptably ugly stuck on the side of the frame. As it happens, I’m not a lover of ABS. The way I see it, in over 50 years of riding motorcycles, I have not experienced one single incident that would have been helped by ABS. But in the first year of owning and riding a bike with ABS, I twice nearly ran into the back of the vehicle in front when the ‘clever’ ABS system decided a bump over a pothole was in fact the front wheel locking and so it released the brakes. Which left me rolling rapidly towards the back of the vehicle in front while madly squeezing the brake lever to absolutely zero effect. A frightening experience I can tell you. Fortunately, in both cases the ABS recovered in time and finally I was able to pull up without hitting anything, but I would never have suffered that at all if simply braking under manual control. So I’m no lover of ABS and contrary to what other bikers seem to believe (according to their comments on forums), I do not believe ABS is an absolute necessity and that without it I am signing my own death warrant, as I will surely kill myself. Really, that has actually been claimed, in reponse to…
I removed the ABS entirely from the VFR1200.
Not actually hard to do. I would be replacing the brake lines anyway so it was just a question of unbolting the bits, extracting all the horrible steel brake lines running all over the bike and pulling it all off. But how to then sort the electronics? Ay, there lies the rub - although I don’t think Shakespeare had the VFR1200’s ABS in mind when he wrote that.
Fortunately, the ABS has its own independent ECU whose only connection to the main ECU is the wheel speed signals that the ABS ECU extracts from the Wheel Speed Sensors and passes on to the main ECU. Simple, but the cause of a big problem. I don’t want the ABS ECU, but the main ECU HAS to have those wheel speed signals as it not only uses that as the vehicle speed but also for the Traction Control which is handled by the man ECU.
The VFR1200 uses Hall Effect WSSs with just 2 wires (no ground connection either). So with just 2 wires it powers each WSS AND reads back the speed signal. This is clever shit and I do not completely understand it. Hence, to design some replacement electronics to do all that was beyond me. In the end I adopted the simplest solution of unbolting the ABS ECU electronics from the hydraulic module and using that on the bike to drive each WSS, process the speed signals and send them to the main ECU, as standard. With the hydraulics removed the remaining box is small enough I was able to reposition it under the rear of the petrol tank (where the evaporation canister for California models would be located) and extended the wiring.
In theory that should all work perfectly as the ABS ECU should not know there’s no hydraulics attached and only flag an error on the dash warning light when it thinks the wheels are locking. Nothing it can do about that though with no hydraulics to control, so it ought to just be a handy ‘over braking’ warning. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The ABS ECU is somehow aware that there’s a big chunk of its system missing and despite inserting a big resistor in the circuit in an attempt to fool it into believing the pump is still there, very soon after setting off, the ABS warning light in the dash starts flashing.
This I have not so far been able to fix. So I stuck some tape over the warning light. Problem solved :-)
Of course it makes no difference if the ABS ECU thinks there’s a problem as there is NOTHING it can do about it apart from flash the warning light. However, it irritates me that there is this issue, so I will look into it again some time and try and figure out the final solution so I have no error flashing and just my ‘over braking’ warning light on the dash.
Speaking of which, the bike was a cat C write off. It had fallen into a ditch of water so the insurance company wrote it off. Hey, it’s a Honda, it’ll still work. Mustn’t complain though as it provided me with a very cheap VFR1200F to customise. However the one item that did fail due to the drowning was the dash. The third party through which I purchased it had fitted a new one though. Only later I realised he’d used a US one, either not knowing or not caring (as it was undoubtedly cheaper than the correct UK one) that the US dash has no HISS light. This is actually quite a big deal as that light is used as an indicator when pairing a new key. Without that light flashing to let you know what to do, you CANNOT pair a new key and it only came with 1 so I had to add at least one more (lose the last key and you need to buy a new, very expensive ECU).
I bought a UK dash off eBay, when but it arrived it was the earlier version and not correct for my bike. The supplier was apologetic and happy to take it back, but before shipping it off to them, I hooked it up to the bike and quickly programmed the 2 extra keys I had purchased in the meantime. So not a complete waste of time :-)
I didn’t then look any further as I was in any case planning on using a Dash 2 Pro from Race Technology, a higher spec unit than later coincidentally chosen by Ariel for their Ace. With this unit in place (as seen in Phase 1) I wired it all up to do some amazing stuff, but I was unable to interface it to one aspect of the VFR’s electrical system.
The VFR1200 uses a unique and proprietary serial communication protocol (over a single wire) for the main ECU to communicate with the dash. Why they did this I’ve no idea as most of the dash is simple ‘connecting the dots’, but this serial connection carries the low oil pressure warning, the engine management warning, the current selected gear and the HISS light, all of which I needed. Fortunately I was already in communication with Simon Saunders of Ariel and asked how they interfaced their Race-tech dash with the VFR’s ECU that they also use. He wouldn’t tell me. Very nice about it, but they have an arrangement with Honda (I believe the only company to ever actually have a deal to use their engines) and that sort of proprietary technical information was not to be divulged to a third party. Extremely frustrating, although understandable I guess. I was unable to use any contacts within Honda to elicit this information. Basically, Honda UK know nothing about it anyway. Hey plug it in, I works, Great. It doesn’t? Get another one from stock.
To be fair, Simon did offer to sell me their complete dash and interface module package, but it was expensive and by that time I had decided to…
Use a VFR1200X CrossTourer dash instead. Since this works on the same serial communication protocol as the ‘F’, it avoided the entire issue. I lost all the fancy functionality of the Race-Tech dash, but to be honest, riding a bike is not about faffing around with fancy dash features and the shape of the CT dash suited where I had available on the bike. Still some issues to overcome though.
The CT uses LED indicators - at 9V. Yay, well done Honda. Obviously just to make sure no-one can use the nice LED indicators from later bikes on other older ones. You can try and they flash very brightly, once or twice, then, er, don’t. As I found to my cost when building the FireFighter :-(
But what voltage does the CT dash expect for its indicator warning lights. Most of the warning lights will be the normal 12v, but they’re all LED and so special 9V ones might have been used for the indicator warning function. Cue much messing about trying to determine the appropriate voltage without burning out one of the LEDs in the NEW dash I had just purchased. Much as I love what LEDs can bring to the design of a dash, if one of those little warning lights fails? Hey, new dash and I really didn’t want to have to cough up another £600 just because I blew a little LED in the dash. In the end, without damage, I was able to determine that fortunately, the dash is entirely 12V. Next problem…
The F and X models both use the same wiring connector for the wiring harness to plug into the back of the dash. Yay.
Not so yay is that Honda decided to use a different pin layout in each case. Man, they really don’t want anyone messing with these bikes do they. However, I have become pretty adept at pulling pins from all the different plugs and sockets Honda uses on these bikes and once I had figured out the pinouts of each bike, simply re-arranging the wiring to the plug on my bike was no big deal. With all that done, the dash now all works - ish.
The CT has a lower red line than the F model. But the CT dash tacho goes up to what is the red line on the F. So it just means I won’t know the exact rpm when revving the engine above the red line. Not exactly a problem. I cannot remember ever going even near the red line and certainly not above that. So the CT tacho display will be just fine.
Not so the fuel gauge. The CT fuel level sender operates through a wider range than the F and there is NO simple way to correct that. I initially just used a resistor in circuit so it was correct at the low end, but eventually found a special fuel level gauge correction device that would allow me to calibrate the F sender to the X gauge. Which would have been simple except…
Honda use a digital method of reading the sender. It ‘polls’ the sender periodically rather than using the voltage output to control the gauge display like an analogue gauge. This would simply not work with the Gauge Wizard device I was trying to use to correct the display. Fortunately though the producer of this device was able to supply an older version that was supposed to work with a ‘polling’ system such as Honda use. It did :-) I still have some further adjustments to make, but then I’ll have an accurate fuel gauge which is more than can be said for almost every other motorcycle.
I still had the Cruise Control device waiting to be installed, but just doing that would be too easy so I decided to complicate things.
I hate throttle cables. Impossible to obtain perfect adjustment at all steering angles and they flap about, look unsightly and get in the way. Ride-By-Wire was supposed to rid us of this scourge. When I first heard about Drive-By-Wire in cars I immediately understood how that could be used to advantage on a bike by using a sensor actually within the twist-grip. So rather than 2 Bowden cables flapping around, just some electrical wiring would be all that was needed.
But like some other manufacturers have done for some of their models (Yamaha and Aprilia come to mind), Honda decided that they still wanted throttle cables on the VFR1200. Idiots. So these cables run from a regular twist-grip to a Throttle Control Position Sensor, ironically mounted on the side of the actual throttle bodies. This then is monitored by the ECU to determine the throttle position. Did I say IDIOTS.
I have obtained both BMW and KTM twist-grip sensors in an attempt to utilise these to eliminate the throttle cables on what is now definitely evolving into my eVo4. Unfortunately, the BMW one is simply too weird and BMW refuse to make the connectors available. The KTM one is a nice Hall Effect unit that could be interfaced to the eVo4’s wiring, but the output didn’t match that of the VFR’s original TCP Sensor. So it all ground to a halt.
Wind forward a year or so and Honda announce the RC211V with their first actual TCP Sensor built-in to the twist-grip. Expecting an outrageous cost for anything related to this premium model, I let more time pass in the expectation that this would filter down onto other ‘more affordable’ models and sure enough the 2017 FireBlade has exactly that. Almost certainly the same actual internals, just possibly with different length wiring and all for less than £200 if memory serves correctly. Without entering a diatribe against Honda’s parts pricing policies, I can say that fortunately though an acquaintance who used to work for American Honda I was able to obtain both the right and the left switchgear assemblies for the 2017 ‘Blade at a more acceptable price. But would they work?
The left hand switch is just a collection of switches so with some re-wiring it would not be difficult to wire it in and it would provide some of the additional switches needed to control special features of my eVo4 (e.g. Cruise Control). But the twist-grip TCPS was a complete gamble. Actually, not entirely true. I managed to obtain a copy of the new ‘Blade's Workshop manual that covered troubleshooting this sensor, from which I was able to determine that it apparently output the same voltage as the VFR’s original TCPS, despite the former being a modern Hall effect sensor and the latter being a basic variable resistor (potentiometer). I was relieved although not entirely surprised as contrary to popular opinion, Honda don’t always try to re-invent the wheel. They (and many other manufacturers) know that the 0-5v range works, so if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. But the proof of the pudding and all that…
Having received the new switchgear, I set to adapting the eVo4. I removed the original TCPS and with connectors I also have to obtain from the US made up the short loom to connect the new twist-grip sensor to the original connector on the wiring loom (easy to revert if it doesn’t work). With everything then connected up and the essentials back in place, with much trepidation I switched it on and pressed the starter. It started of course, but how would it respond to the new style TCPS in twist-grip. So I played around with the throttle a little and the engine response was, er…
PERFECT. Yay! After all that, the ECU doesn’t give a damn whether it’s a potentiometer or a Hall effect sensor telling it what throttle position is desired. All it cares about is the voltage it sees and both devices produce the same output.
Very shortly after that I took the bike on a 1000 mile jaunt around the UK which proved conclusively that it all works perfectly, no problem at all. I could try and claim the throttle control feels better, but I think I’d be imagining it. What it definitely does mean however is a completely consistent throttle action and the same play etc no matter how you turn the bars. So finally, my eVo4 has been able to completely dispense with the throttle cables.
One last piece of the puzzle and connected (literally) to the previous work, the Cruise Control, connected to all the same wiring, inserted in between the TCPS/twist-grip and the ECU. In fact I was able to relatively easily mount it in the location vacated by the old TCPS, on the side of the throttle bodies, with some weatherproofing applied as it is actually a car unit, but tucked away where it is it won’t exactly get drenched.
Unfortunately there was no time to finish set up before that trip so had to wait till later. Then I ran through the setup procedure that adjusts the unit to the bike’s throttle outputs etc and also the gain and another factor of which I forget the name. Basically, they control the rate at which it tries to match the set speed and keep it constant. With these wrong it might accelerate too fast and then overshoot and then hunt up and down as it tries to maintain speed etc. Anyway, once this setup had been done, quite frankly it seems to need no more tweaking. After more extended use I might want to make some minor adjustments, but it’s already working really well. I love Cruise Control :-)
Which I think brings us up-to-date. It’s been a long road, but much of that my fault as I got bored and worked on something else, or it was winter and too cold in my workshop and then a (minor) heart attack in 2017 sidelined me for a bit. But it is a fantastic bike. The VFR1200F has been much maligned, unfairly in my opinion. It is a terrific bike with a perfectly acceptable fuel consumption and tank range, slightly better and slightly worse respectively than BMW’s K1300R which never receives the same complaints. Performance is outstanding as it is an extremely powerful machine, faster even than the BlackBird. Just doesn’t feel it with such a flat torque curve. I like to think my suspension mods work well, but I cannot hand on heart claim to have actually improved it from standard. I am a firm believer in riding well to get the best out of a bike rather than always thinking you need something else in order to ride better/faster. I like Ohlins because I like gold forks and Brembo brakes just look great. But it’s just bling. Are they actually better than the OEM items? Well I can state categorically than on my FireFighter the Ohlins and Brembos make not a jot of difference to the performance as I have ridden it a lot with just just those changes. Not so easy to compare on the eVo4 as they came with all the other customisation and weight reduction etc.
As long as I can still ride faster than anyone else, I’m happy. Even though I don’t do that any more :-)"
The axle for all the above forks is 25mm and although the ZZR forks would normally be spaced at 216mm, the 214m spacing Honda use just offsets the callipers slightly compared to the discs which is no actual problem and the Kawasaki axle was able to cope with the variation. I just had to make my own wheel spacers to suit.
The rear shock is Ohlins’ unit for the VFR1200F although I mounted the reservoir bracket slightly differently to clear the hugger. They claim you cannot use a hugger with their shock.
Wheels and discs are OEM VFR1200F, but the callipers are 109mm spacing Brembo radials for the Hayabusa (cheap :-), with 32mm pistons all round. I previously used 30/32mm Brembos from a FireBlade SP, but then swapped those to my FireFighter to go with the SP Ohlins I had obtained for that.
Front wheel uses a VFR800 8th Gen ABS ring which I was able to fit to the wheel and was the correct diameter to suit the Wheel Speed Sensor location of the Ohlins (for Kawasaki) forks. Unfortunately that ring has a different number of slots so a Speedo Healer is used to correct the signal back to what the VFR’s ECU expects. If I switch to the Hayabusa forks I will need to make my own WSS mount and so will make a special ABS ring with the original no. of slots and be able to eliminate the Speedo Healer.
Every nut or bolt that could be was replaced by Al or Ti versions as appropriate and there are several special and unique parts I machined from scratch to suit the bike.
Front screen is a Puig Alien as that was the exact look I was after. I was fortunate to find a couple of them as Puig no longer manufacture them. I was also fortunate to find I was able to mount the screen on the OEM fairing bracket using the mirror mount position and also a custom bracket for the bottom of the fairing. I had to grind off part of the bracket to clear one of the headlights though. I’d like to replace the halogen projector lights with LED as they ought to be smaller and leave more clearance to the bracket, but not found any suitable ones yet.
The tank side covers are cheap pattern parts off eBay that I cut and re-shaped to remove the air scoops that normally connect to the large side fairings. Previously (Phase 2) I made a couple of trim pieces to fit onto unaltered tank covers, but these big scoops didn’t look great so I bought some cheap covers and hacked them to suit what I wanted.
The exhaust is the Akrapovic for the (Kawasaki again :-) ZX10R as that was exactly the look I wanted and was short enough to miss any panniers if fitted. Akrapovic offer 2 for the VFR1200, a low mount to miss the panniers and one that angles up slightly more which looks better, but fouls the panniers. In any case, I much prefer the shape of their ZX-10R one. I had already estimated that it should bolt straight onto the original mounting location off the pillion footrest so bolted it on and had a link pipe made to connect it from there to the OEM outlet just after the cat. This exhaust looks great and surprisingly, despite it small size, is NOT loud. Sounds good though.
A Dynojet PC-V is in place with 2 switchable maps, but I really should get it on a dyno to optimise the settings to suit the exhaust etc.
Also there’s heated handlebars and an electronic Cruise Control which is made easily possible due to the VFR1200 being Ride By Wire. However the CC is actually a recent addition as for various reasons I just didn’t get around to it for a couple of years.
There is also a QuickShifter with downshift/blipper capability although that latter has not yet been implemented.
The most complicated and time consuming aspect of the whole process was the electronics. Not just their inherent complexity but also because you cannot obtain the information you need to do this sort of thing. This is something I hate about the way everything is sold these days. The buyer is expected to hand over the money while being told very little about the product. You are not supposed to know anything about it. Dealers are kept in the dark and in this case even Honda UK did not actually know the details of the systems on this bike. Anyway…
There’s quite a lot of extra wiring for additional switches and devices like bar heaters and CC etc. and my own logic for the lighting so no headlight when engine not running, just the original LED position lights in the mirrors. Then once engine is running some small but bright LED running lights in the front screen also illuminate. These can be switched over to headlights as required. I hate having to have headlights on all the time so I made sure I had the ability to turn them off. But I like the LED running lights so can alternate between those and the headlights. With the OEM position lights, they make a nice V at the front. :-)
Something that was immediately apparent when starting out was that the ABS module had to be moved. With no fairings, it would have been unacceptably ugly stuck on the side of the frame. As it happens, I’m not a lover of ABS. The way I see it, in over 50 years of riding motorcycles, I have not experienced one single incident that would have been helped by ABS. But in the first year of owning and riding a bike with ABS, I twice nearly ran into the back of the vehicle in front when the ‘clever’ ABS system decided a bump over a pothole was in fact the front wheel locking and so it released the brakes. Which left me rolling rapidly towards the back of the vehicle in front while madly squeezing the brake lever to absolutely zero effect. A frightening experience I can tell you. Fortunately, in both cases the ABS recovered in time and finally I was able to pull up without hitting anything, but I would never have suffered that at all if simply braking under manual control. So I’m no lover of ABS and contrary to what other bikers seem to believe (according to their comments on forums), I do not believe ABS is an absolute necessity and that without it I am signing my own death warrant, as I will surely kill myself. Really, that has actually been claimed, in reponse to…
I removed the ABS entirely from the VFR1200.
Not actually hard to do. I would be replacing the brake lines anyway so it was just a question of unbolting the bits, extracting all the horrible steel brake lines running all over the bike and pulling it all off. But how to then sort the electronics? Ay, there lies the rub - although I don’t think Shakespeare had the VFR1200’s ABS in mind when he wrote that.
Fortunately, the ABS has its own independent ECU whose only connection to the main ECU is the wheel speed signals that the ABS ECU extracts from the Wheel Speed Sensors and passes on to the main ECU. Simple, but the cause of a big problem. I don’t want the ABS ECU, but the main ECU HAS to have those wheel speed signals as it not only uses that as the vehicle speed but also for the Traction Control which is handled by the man ECU.
The VFR1200 uses Hall Effect WSSs with just 2 wires (no ground connection either). So with just 2 wires it powers each WSS AND reads back the speed signal. This is clever shit and I do not completely understand it. Hence, to design some replacement electronics to do all that was beyond me. In the end I adopted the simplest solution of unbolting the ABS ECU electronics from the hydraulic module and using that on the bike to drive each WSS, process the speed signals and send them to the main ECU, as standard. With the hydraulics removed the remaining box is small enough I was able to reposition it under the rear of the petrol tank (where the evaporation canister for California models would be located) and extended the wiring.
In theory that should all work perfectly as the ABS ECU should not know there’s no hydraulics attached and only flag an error on the dash warning light when it thinks the wheels are locking. Nothing it can do about that though with no hydraulics to control, so it ought to just be a handy ‘over braking’ warning. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The ABS ECU is somehow aware that there’s a big chunk of its system missing and despite inserting a big resistor in the circuit in an attempt to fool it into believing the pump is still there, very soon after setting off, the ABS warning light in the dash starts flashing.
This I have not so far been able to fix. So I stuck some tape over the warning light. Problem solved :-)
Of course it makes no difference if the ABS ECU thinks there’s a problem as there is NOTHING it can do about it apart from flash the warning light. However, it irritates me that there is this issue, so I will look into it again some time and try and figure out the final solution so I have no error flashing and just my ‘over braking’ warning light on the dash.
Speaking of which, the bike was a cat C write off. It had fallen into a ditch of water so the insurance company wrote it off. Hey, it’s a Honda, it’ll still work. Mustn’t complain though as it provided me with a very cheap VFR1200F to customise. However the one item that did fail due to the drowning was the dash. The third party through which I purchased it had fitted a new one though. Only later I realised he’d used a US one, either not knowing or not caring (as it was undoubtedly cheaper than the correct UK one) that the US dash has no HISS light. This is actually quite a big deal as that light is used as an indicator when pairing a new key. Without that light flashing to let you know what to do, you CANNOT pair a new key and it only came with 1 so I had to add at least one more (lose the last key and you need to buy a new, very expensive ECU).
I bought a UK dash off eBay, when but it arrived it was the earlier version and not correct for my bike. The supplier was apologetic and happy to take it back, but before shipping it off to them, I hooked it up to the bike and quickly programmed the 2 extra keys I had purchased in the meantime. So not a complete waste of time :-)
I didn’t then look any further as I was in any case planning on using a Dash 2 Pro from Race Technology, a higher spec unit than later coincidentally chosen by Ariel for their Ace. With this unit in place (as seen in Phase 1) I wired it all up to do some amazing stuff, but I was unable to interface it to one aspect of the VFR’s electrical system.
The VFR1200 uses a unique and proprietary serial communication protocol (over a single wire) for the main ECU to communicate with the dash. Why they did this I’ve no idea as most of the dash is simple ‘connecting the dots’, but this serial connection carries the low oil pressure warning, the engine management warning, the current selected gear and the HISS light, all of which I needed. Fortunately I was already in communication with Simon Saunders of Ariel and asked how they interfaced their Race-tech dash with the VFR’s ECU that they also use. He wouldn’t tell me. Very nice about it, but they have an arrangement with Honda (I believe the only company to ever actually have a deal to use their engines) and that sort of proprietary technical information was not to be divulged to a third party. Extremely frustrating, although understandable I guess. I was unable to use any contacts within Honda to elicit this information. Basically, Honda UK know nothing about it anyway. Hey plug it in, I works, Great. It doesn’t? Get another one from stock.
To be fair, Simon did offer to sell me their complete dash and interface module package, but it was expensive and by that time I had decided to…
Use a VFR1200X CrossTourer dash instead. Since this works on the same serial communication protocol as the ‘F’, it avoided the entire issue. I lost all the fancy functionality of the Race-Tech dash, but to be honest, riding a bike is not about faffing around with fancy dash features and the shape of the CT dash suited where I had available on the bike. Still some issues to overcome though.
The CT uses LED indicators - at 9V. Yay, well done Honda. Obviously just to make sure no-one can use the nice LED indicators from later bikes on other older ones. You can try and they flash very brightly, once or twice, then, er, don’t. As I found to my cost when building the FireFighter :-(
But what voltage does the CT dash expect for its indicator warning lights. Most of the warning lights will be the normal 12v, but they’re all LED and so special 9V ones might have been used for the indicator warning function. Cue much messing about trying to determine the appropriate voltage without burning out one of the LEDs in the NEW dash I had just purchased. Much as I love what LEDs can bring to the design of a dash, if one of those little warning lights fails? Hey, new dash and I really didn’t want to have to cough up another £600 just because I blew a little LED in the dash. In the end, without damage, I was able to determine that fortunately, the dash is entirely 12V. Next problem…
The F and X models both use the same wiring connector for the wiring harness to plug into the back of the dash. Yay.
Not so yay is that Honda decided to use a different pin layout in each case. Man, they really don’t want anyone messing with these bikes do they. However, I have become pretty adept at pulling pins from all the different plugs and sockets Honda uses on these bikes and once I had figured out the pinouts of each bike, simply re-arranging the wiring to the plug on my bike was no big deal. With all that done, the dash now all works - ish.
The CT has a lower red line than the F model. But the CT dash tacho goes up to what is the red line on the F. So it just means I won’t know the exact rpm when revving the engine above the red line. Not exactly a problem. I cannot remember ever going even near the red line and certainly not above that. So the CT tacho display will be just fine.
Not so the fuel gauge. The CT fuel level sender operates through a wider range than the F and there is NO simple way to correct that. I initially just used a resistor in circuit so it was correct at the low end, but eventually found a special fuel level gauge correction device that would allow me to calibrate the F sender to the X gauge. Which would have been simple except…
Honda use a digital method of reading the sender. It ‘polls’ the sender periodically rather than using the voltage output to control the gauge display like an analogue gauge. This would simply not work with the Gauge Wizard device I was trying to use to correct the display. Fortunately though the producer of this device was able to supply an older version that was supposed to work with a ‘polling’ system such as Honda use. It did :-) I still have some further adjustments to make, but then I’ll have an accurate fuel gauge which is more than can be said for almost every other motorcycle.
I still had the Cruise Control device waiting to be installed, but just doing that would be too easy so I decided to complicate things.
I hate throttle cables. Impossible to obtain perfect adjustment at all steering angles and they flap about, look unsightly and get in the way. Ride-By-Wire was supposed to rid us of this scourge. When I first heard about Drive-By-Wire in cars I immediately understood how that could be used to advantage on a bike by using a sensor actually within the twist-grip. So rather than 2 Bowden cables flapping around, just some electrical wiring would be all that was needed.
But like some other manufacturers have done for some of their models (Yamaha and Aprilia come to mind), Honda decided that they still wanted throttle cables on the VFR1200. Idiots. So these cables run from a regular twist-grip to a Throttle Control Position Sensor, ironically mounted on the side of the actual throttle bodies. This then is monitored by the ECU to determine the throttle position. Did I say IDIOTS.
I have obtained both BMW and KTM twist-grip sensors in an attempt to utilise these to eliminate the throttle cables on what is now definitely evolving into my eVo4. Unfortunately, the BMW one is simply too weird and BMW refuse to make the connectors available. The KTM one is a nice Hall Effect unit that could be interfaced to the eVo4’s wiring, but the output didn’t match that of the VFR’s original TCP Sensor. So it all ground to a halt.
Wind forward a year or so and Honda announce the RC211V with their first actual TCP Sensor built-in to the twist-grip. Expecting an outrageous cost for anything related to this premium model, I let more time pass in the expectation that this would filter down onto other ‘more affordable’ models and sure enough the 2017 FireBlade has exactly that. Almost certainly the same actual internals, just possibly with different length wiring and all for less than £200 if memory serves correctly. Without entering a diatribe against Honda’s parts pricing policies, I can say that fortunately though an acquaintance who used to work for American Honda I was able to obtain both the right and the left switchgear assemblies for the 2017 ‘Blade at a more acceptable price. But would they work?
The left hand switch is just a collection of switches so with some re-wiring it would not be difficult to wire it in and it would provide some of the additional switches needed to control special features of my eVo4 (e.g. Cruise Control). But the twist-grip TCPS was a complete gamble. Actually, not entirely true. I managed to obtain a copy of the new ‘Blade's Workshop manual that covered troubleshooting this sensor, from which I was able to determine that it apparently output the same voltage as the VFR’s original TCPS, despite the former being a modern Hall effect sensor and the latter being a basic variable resistor (potentiometer). I was relieved although not entirely surprised as contrary to popular opinion, Honda don’t always try to re-invent the wheel. They (and many other manufacturers) know that the 0-5v range works, so if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. But the proof of the pudding and all that…
Having received the new switchgear, I set to adapting the eVo4. I removed the original TCPS and with connectors I also have to obtain from the US made up the short loom to connect the new twist-grip sensor to the original connector on the wiring loom (easy to revert if it doesn’t work). With everything then connected up and the essentials back in place, with much trepidation I switched it on and pressed the starter. It started of course, but how would it respond to the new style TCPS in twist-grip. So I played around with the throttle a little and the engine response was, er…
PERFECT. Yay! After all that, the ECU doesn’t give a damn whether it’s a potentiometer or a Hall effect sensor telling it what throttle position is desired. All it cares about is the voltage it sees and both devices produce the same output.
Very shortly after that I took the bike on a 1000 mile jaunt around the UK which proved conclusively that it all works perfectly, no problem at all. I could try and claim the throttle control feels better, but I think I’d be imagining it. What it definitely does mean however is a completely consistent throttle action and the same play etc no matter how you turn the bars. So finally, my eVo4 has been able to completely dispense with the throttle cables.
One last piece of the puzzle and connected (literally) to the previous work, the Cruise Control, connected to all the same wiring, inserted in between the TCPS/twist-grip and the ECU. In fact I was able to relatively easily mount it in the location vacated by the old TCPS, on the side of the throttle bodies, with some weatherproofing applied as it is actually a car unit, but tucked away where it is it won’t exactly get drenched.
Unfortunately there was no time to finish set up before that trip so had to wait till later. Then I ran through the setup procedure that adjusts the unit to the bike’s throttle outputs etc and also the gain and another factor of which I forget the name. Basically, they control the rate at which it tries to match the set speed and keep it constant. With these wrong it might accelerate too fast and then overshoot and then hunt up and down as it tries to maintain speed etc. Anyway, once this setup had been done, quite frankly it seems to need no more tweaking. After more extended use I might want to make some minor adjustments, but it’s already working really well. I love Cruise Control :-)
Which I think brings us up-to-date. It’s been a long road, but much of that my fault as I got bored and worked on something else, or it was winter and too cold in my workshop and then a (minor) heart attack in 2017 sidelined me for a bit. But it is a fantastic bike. The VFR1200F has been much maligned, unfairly in my opinion. It is a terrific bike with a perfectly acceptable fuel consumption and tank range, slightly better and slightly worse respectively than BMW’s K1300R which never receives the same complaints. Performance is outstanding as it is an extremely powerful machine, faster even than the BlackBird. Just doesn’t feel it with such a flat torque curve. I like to think my suspension mods work well, but I cannot hand on heart claim to have actually improved it from standard. I am a firm believer in riding well to get the best out of a bike rather than always thinking you need something else in order to ride better/faster. I like Ohlins because I like gold forks and Brembo brakes just look great. But it’s just bling. Are they actually better than the OEM items? Well I can state categorically than on my FireFighter the Ohlins and Brembos make not a jot of difference to the performance as I have ridden it a lot with just just those changes. Not so easy to compare on the eVo4 as they came with all the other customisation and weight reduction etc.
As long as I can still ride faster than anyone else, I’m happy. Even though I don’t do that any more :-)"
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