cuoccimix

I have installed a Power Commander unit on my bike....but it's not a modern one. It's quite a old piece of vintage electronic, being a PC II, made in 1999-2000 (found a new old stock one, still with sealed box, for one hundreds euros). The box itself is quite self-explaining about the age of the item: The installation is very easy - just unplug the original harness, and plug the PC II betweem ECU and original connector (no additional plugs are present on this old device). It sits quite well under the seat, but it was not possible to hide the connectors in a less invasive position. The plastic hooks under the seat are perfect to fit the wire properly. After a bit of struggling with adapters (the thing has a serial port!) and with unusable software, i finally managed to install the proper files and to connect the PC II to my notebook. I have installed a map previously tested by a member of the Italian VFR club, and now the bike can run for almost 280 km until the res light - that's a gain of 40 km. Performances are almost unchanged, just a slight loss of stamina and smoothness at low rpm. Now the bike stays in the range of 16 km/l (almost 38 mpg), and that's an acceptable mileage, albeit not impressive for sure. Now it's a VFR-BNSO (Very Frequent refuelling, But Not So Often).

As said, it seems that every '98 owner in Italy gets bad mileage, regardless of the injectors conditions or the speed. Y2K catalyzed models are known for having a MUCH lower fuel consumption. The bike runs great anyway.

I'm going to replace my original headlight bulbs with whiter Osram Night Breaker bulbs, and i have seen this beautiful mod: The mod is visible in this video Now i just want to know if those LED bulbs may cause problem in the long term. I want to stick to halogen in the headlight, exactly for this reason. I would like to use LED just for the turn indicators and for the parking light. Am i doing right?

Hi, sorry for not replying immediately to this interesting debate. Well, what can i say...When i did the flapper mod, i got an immediate advantage at very low rpms (under 3500 rpm, so to say). The V4 is not the smoothest engine at those rpms anyway, but now it's much better. Don't know why it behaves in this way, it should be the opposite (open flapper valve = roughest behavior at low rpm), but currently i will keep the flapper mod. Snorkel mod - just a matter of better noise 😉 Gas mileage? It's always the same - bad. You go slow, you go fast, it seems that the injection system was originally set to always squirt as much gas as possible in the cylinders, regardless of the conditions. I drove my bike for half tank at hilarious city speed (3000-4000 rpm) and the result was always the same , a miserable 235 km (146 miles) from a full tank, excluding reserve. Just yesterday i heard another 800 Fi owner - he had one non-catalyzed (1998) and one with catalyzer (2001). Well , he said exactly the same things - the '98 has a better punch at midrange but has crap mileage and runs always quite rich (the exhaust is always a bit blackened after some hundreds of km). Fuelly mainly shows results from US bikes, the few non-US bikes have worse result about gas mileage. Exactly for this reason, i would like to know if there is some differences between the 1998-1999 Italian-European ECU and the USA one.

eheh, that's a good question....I'm a big guy, but my weight was the same on my previous ZZR 600. As Thtanner said, i'm chasing ghosts...i can't really cope with the fact that there are other bikes from the same years that have an higher mileage. I bought the viffer also for long travels and that fuel hunger really pisses me off, actually it prevents me from embarking more often in long journeys. You know, average price in Italy is 1.60 Euro per liter. Yesterday i checked out the average 5th gen mileage on Fuelly, and apparently US bikes have a lower consumption than EU bikes. I even thought to install a US/California ECU. Apparently i got 10 km more after pouring a can of injector cleaner in the tank. Will try to buy another can and/or to manually clean the injector. Wow, if only we had lower gas prices, i could live with that.

Hi, air filter has been replaced, no dragging brakes, the bike works well but i never checked the fuel pressure regulator. I had some FI issues caused by bad connectors and/or ground connector. Now it' OK and i have also poured a whole can of injector cleaner in the tank. The gas mileage was always the same - never seen a real improvement. JZH, i live in Bari, South Italy. Quite far from the classic "motor valleys" in the North, but we have nice roads here too 🙂

Hi, this is my '98 5th gen VFR 800 FI. I bought this bike one year ago with 27500 km on the clock. The bike was like new - not a single scratch or rust spot. Went through a very long series of small issues (R/R, connectors, etc) caused by the long inactivity of the bike. Now they are all solved, except one - the gas mileage! It is pretty bad, around 14 km/l (33 mpg) riding in "mixed" mode (around 5000 rpm with some high speed launch). The exhaust always smell a bit rich, the bike runs well though. I did the usual snorkel / flapper mods, went through a lot of discussions, somebody says it's a normal mileage for a pre-cat bike, somebody other says i should clean / synchronize the injectors, but my mechanic says that everything is OK on my bike. I would like to know if the bike mileage is normal and if it can be improved without buying a Power Commander. BTW, it is true that US bikes from the same year have a different ECU? Maybe they have a better gas mileage? Thanks!