XB's were designed to have turbos!!

[kokomochandler]

he's ericz over on buelletinboard.com

 

[motownsniper]

does anyone know about turbos?engines designed for turbos are low compression,xb's are high compression.gettin boosted air to intake easy,getting enough fuel out of injectors is the hard part!

 

[Alfatango1]

Pistons are probably switched out I would assume. Fuel mapping can be changed no problem. Not sure if the flow rate of the injectors are adequate or if the are replaced with high flow units.

 

[motownsniper]

yes you could use low compression pistons,make injectors larger but remapping is way more involved,you would have to mess with the air flow sensors which normally are under a vacuum to read when the opposite happens,mass air flow sensor would be pressurized instead of a vacuum.not to mention the IAT! whats it gonna do if u dont run an intercooler?

 

[kokomochandler]

high comp. and boost dont work cus it overheats the piston. so you have to run to much fuel to cool it down but then rich i runs like crap so you can do like ericz did and add water injection and use misted water to cool the cylinders down. email him and ask him for more but it aint cheap but no more expensive as an engine build for low comp pistons.

 

[browland]

I'm sure Erik B would have even better solutions

 

[gear2078]

I'm fairly certain a stock bike would not have water injection, though Buick did use it in the late 60's on a hot stock muscle car. Unfortunately I don't know the owner of this bike, I've just done way too much research on Buell Turbos. This guy added six port fogging injectors which required notching the injector ports. Stock injectors are single nozzle and timed to spray on the back of the intake valve to cool it and vaporize the fuel for better economy, so you can imagine how much extra fuel mapping is required for this change.

Also, I have been noticing a lot of people referring to a MAF(mass airflow sensor) which buells do not use. A MAF would be awesome since you can suck air through them with a turbo and they will report the additional airflow to the ECM and allow it to adjust to a certain extent. Our Buells calculate airflow based on throttle position, air temperature, RPM, and and eventually check the fuel ratio against the O2 sensor if we ride in a straight line without changing speed or throttle input for several miles(how often does that happen with a Buell) then adjust... come to think of it I don't recall an XB model even having a MAP sensor! Without a better method of measuring airflow, I'm surprised our bikes run as well as they do. Nearly miraculous! Anyway, this is why our bikes are so darned dependent on being remapped, the computer may as well be deaf or blind. It has to be told what to do because it doesn't have enough sensory input to realize when we make simple changes to back pressure and intake restrictions.

Please don't take this as a negative post, I LOVE both of my bikes (though I haven't ridden my CR yet) and I think Erik Buell is a god-like genius! Unfortunately, Erik has obviously had his hands tied by HD. HD keeps the good stuff for their bikes, such as self canceling turn signals and more easily adjustable fuel injection. I don't have all the answers and I won't ever, but lets just think hypothetically:

Q:How much money would be saved or lost by running Sportster hand controls in stead of outsourcing the ones we got?

Q:How much money would be saved or lost by running Sportster or V-rod engine management?


P.S. Ericz, if you read this I'd love to pick your brain.

 

[chase12s]

Oh the things that could have been. That article just makes me despise HD a little tad more.

 

[meetch]

that black turbo xb is insane...

 

[kokomochandler]

ericz's not on this website but he'll answer all your questions on buelletinboard. but his bike does use water injection. the ecm has a slot that makes map available with ecmspy. i dont know if its been utilized but ericz and xopti are fully aware of it.

water box

 

[motownsniper]

interesting,i never really looked under the air filter cover,i never realized buells didnt have an air flow sensor,it is amazing they run as good as they do without one.

 

[kokomochandler]

all you need is an iat. cars didnt have maf till 95 or so and map wasnt to far before that. obd 3 in cars are just like buells iat and not much else.

 

[gear2078]

Kokomochandler, I don't know of any cars off of the top of my head that didn't have some sort of are meter on top of an iat. I had a 78 280ZX that had the old swinging door airflow meter, demolition derby'd the car and found the sensor highly sensitive to impacts: every time I hit another car or got hit I had to floor the accelerator to prevent flooding.

1986 Fords had MAP sensors
80's Volkswagens with fuel injection used a lambda plate right on the high pressure fuel injector pump- opening the throttle caused more airflow to pull down the plate and mechanical arm increasing fuel flow.

Sorry to bring back a dead post, just bored. There is about 4 inches of ice covering my driveway and temperatures are in the single digits. I miss my bike. Trying to stimulate my mind and not succumb to the lure of the new Xbox and 53 inch tv.

 

[dan_nj]

Turbo on my 12 I want one

 

[Loki]

Erik is a golden man. I want to turbo a buell and now i will make sure i will buy a 2005 or lower buell firebolt.

I emailed Mr.Erik today. And not even 30 mintues after i emailed him he emailed back. WOW

Trea Huggs January 1 at 12:20pm
Hi Mr. Erik, if me and my friend rode our Buells down to EBR this summer, would you meet with us? Maybe if you have time talk to us about whats all going on around the shop with a tour maybe. We mainly just want to meet you, shake your hand. Everything else would just be a great bonus. Thanks!

Erik Buell January 1 at 12:36pm Report
Sure, although the place is small, and time is tight! Crazy workload.

Such a great guy.

 

[nativeXb12Rbuell]

turbo would have been great , but you can also do like what FireChickenXB9R & some others have done with their buells with the hole in the tank.

 

[riceetr]

Damn I want a hole in my frame so I could do that. Of course a turbo would be better. Would have been a completely different monster and probably would have sold 10x more if they came with the turbo and 150 whp & 120 ft lbs of torque.

 

[user_deleted]

you bolt a blower(turbo) onto an XB and we all know you just gotta use it, feel that boost, get all racy and wild. my question would be how long would the motor/trans/primary drive take a 40% across the board increase in HP and torque...and survive. just wondering.

 

[riceetr]

Yea I wonder about the reliability of the engine and trans at those levels to. Maybe that's why HD decided to scrap it. They were probably afraid of having problems and didn't want to take losses on warranty work of a highly stressed machine.

 

[Red93stang]

The reliablity wasnt the issue, as I remember one of the issues was cost of the turbo kit was too high per unit. Aerocharger could not get the cost down to HD's needs. Reliablity was aided by the ECM controlled variable vein turbo setup. Bean counters are usually the ones that kill cool projects like this.