RB20 Engine management on Kawasaki Z1300

[stilettoman]

Some of you may recall my RB20 powered 48 Studebaker, which I described here in some detail, and my RB20 powered RX-7. Both of these cars are running and driving very well. My Stiletto three wheeler was also running well until one day I had a wiring meltdown, cause unknown, that included melting the plastic box with all the relays and fuses. This is a 1984 Kawasaki Z1300 , one of the very first motorcycle engines with electronic fuel injection, and NOTHING was tuneable or adjustable except the idle speed. We discussed some of the aftermarket fuel injection systems. But we kept coming back to the fact that we had accumulated a lot of RB20 spare parts – ECU, ignition module, cam sensor, throttle sensor, MAF and a wire harness. The Kawasaki is a straight six, twin cams, same firing order – why not make it a research project ? The Kawasaki had a crank sensor only, with a lost spark system meaning it fired the plugs every revolution. My machinist made an adapter to drive the RB20 cam sensor off the exhaust cam, and the rest was pretty straight forward, not to say it was simple.  I am using a Z32 instrument cluster - figuring out how to drive the electronic speedo may be a challenge.

 

We built a custom intake plenum, used the RB20 injectors, coil packs, throttle body and TPS from an Infiniti J30 (Nissan Leopard), stock Kawasaki fuel pump (36 psi) and a custom made fuel rail, air box and air filter setup. We sent the ECU to ConceptZ to get the Nistune board installed, and my tuner guy wasted about a hour to figure out they had installed the wrong map. Once he downloaded the correct map he had it starting, idling and running smoothly in just a few minutes.

We got a Code 21 fault, and I checked the coils – they all have the same primary resistance, and I don't know what else to check. It seems to run just fine.  Any suggestions what else to check?

The Youtube video shows the Stiletto running and driving with the original Kawasaki system – drove it for about 5 years with very few problems.  http://stilettoman.info/2014/09/the-stiletto-project/

[Dale FZ1]

Definitely left field stuff.  Love it.

Give us more detail!

[Ben C34]

Wow, that's awesome  

I always thought you like women's shoes, didn't realise that is what your name means!

 

The ecu seems to know stuff about the coils, so even if the primary resistance is the same, the dwell requirements may be different and giving different feedback, causing the code

[stilettoman]

It has always amazed me that maybe 1% of women and 5% of men seem to know what a Stiletto is.  It was the weapon of choice for Italian, and particularly Sicilian, assassins since the time of Machiavelli in the late 1400s.  When the Italian shoe designer made the first shoe with a very thin spike heel in about 1950, someone said it looks like a stiletto, and the rest is history.  When people have asked me about my email address, I always say I am a hit man in my spare time.  You should have noticed that I incorporated an image of a stiletto in my logo.  The name just came to me when I realized I had designed something that had a sharp point at one end.

Thanks for the comments - I think my tuner just wanted me to verify the coils were all good, and hopefully he can tune out the dwell issue. We are all very proud of the fact the cam sensor works so well - we set a cup of coffee on the motor and it doesn't even make waves when it is running - pretty much like a stock RB20.  We will make another video and post more photos when it is finished - the wiring is a rats nest, but I don't want to tape anything up until I am sure we are through making changes.

[Kawaman]

Hi Stilettoman, would you still have the original dfi parts of your ZG1300? If so, I would be interested in buying them. By the way, I also added an aftermarket closed loop fuel injection system to an 1300 engine. Vendor = KMS management systems https://kms.vankronenburg.nl/.

Works like a charm! It took me some time though to get the mappings right. That is, the injection map and the timing advance map. Can you share your maps? No problem to give you mine. 

Hope to hear from you!

Ruud