[ashwinprakas]

After picking up a BS6 Motorcycle I myself have been forced to adapt to the ways of the EFI people and one of their ritualistic practices is hooking up a OBD reader to their Motorcycles.

Now an OBD Reader needn't need an introduction as it's fairly common these days but an issue us motorcyclists are familiar with is that we do not have the Luxury Car owners get to have by directly plugging a sensor into their ports as most if not all motorcycles come with a variation of smaller connectors that usually need an adapter to be bought or made.

In my case I found one on Amazon costing a whopping 800/- Bucks!



The OBD reader I'd used was the one from iCar/Vgate, Shashi was the one to recommend it to me and it is my go to brand as I can leave it hooked up to the vehicle without a care in the world due to its voltage sensitive auto-shutdown feature.

Anyways, due to the lockdown I'd not been able to get hold of these things as I'd placed the order to my parents place and since movement was restricted I only got hold of these things a day or so ago when my father drove down to the capital as he had to leave the country(Read: Amazon Return Window Closed).

Being curious I hooked it up to the motorcycle within minutes of getting hold of it, one thing to notice is on Motorcycles the OBD 12v supply only comes ON with the Ignition Key ON whereas in Cars it's always powered. The Sensor powered on in my case and that was a huge relief as that confirmed the sensor was working fine and so was the adapter, or at least that's what I'd thought.

But after installing 2 Apps, Torq which costs 250/- bucks on Play Store and another app named Piston which is Free, I couldn't tap into the ECU, reading simply failed.

I was at a loss cause the sensor was powering up fine and when tested with the Alto was working flawlessly, so the issue surely had to be with the Adapter that I paid a relative fortune for.

Now, I am an EFI novice and usually I'm prideful of the fact that I'm from the dying breed that still can work on Carburetors and more so set one up from scratch. But that wasn't helping my case and I had to seek help, which was when a friend and fellow enthusiast Ashish simplified the whole concept of OBD for me.

Basically you have the Power Line, Ground Line, CAN High and CAN Low Lines, so to power up the unit you need to get the Power and Ground set right and for the unit to work as intended you need to set the CAN High and CAN Low lines right. Here's an illustration he shared that made life easy for me.



Now since I had the basics figured I just needed to reconfigure the wiring and for that I had to pull out the pins individually from the connector and reconfigure them. Which I did;



The how of it is simple, using a multimeter find what pin is connected to what checking continuity and once you've made a note of it use the multimeter to check voltage of lines, figuring the power lines is commonsense, as for the CAN lines, the one with Higher Voltage is the CAN High and the one with the lower Voltage is CAN Low, pretty self explanatory.

So this is where we're finally at;

Royal Enfield Bullet 350 BS6

Brown Wire = Positive
Black Wire = Ground
Yellow+Red Wire = CAN High
Purple Wire = CAN Low

These 4 Wires from the harness side is all you'd need to hook-up to the OBD Sensor to get it to work. There is one more wire which is for ABS, which I've not bothered to hookup, period.

NOTE : In the OBD Sensor diagram you will see Pin 4 and 5 shown as Ground, both these pins needs to be connected to the same Ground on the motorcycle side.

Once I'd figured out the wiring I just reinstalled the pins into the connector and did a recheck.



Everything was working fine!

I'd be taping it up when I find the time. Thought I'd share this first before I forget the colour codes.



So I thought I'd put this thread up so others can also share their findings respective to their Motorcycles so that we as motorcyclists wouldn't have to shell a fortune to buy so called adapters and get conned for it when we could simply build ourselves one for peanuts.

And that's about it folks.

Regards,
A.P.

[srini1785]

Ahh Ashwin so you are already fiddling around with a new bike. Couldn't you have waited for say a year?.

It would have been better if you also posted a connection diagram on how to read the data in your mobile or on a laptop so that wanna be nerds would be able to tap into theirs too. So in a gist I will just give this connection diagram.

ECU -> AP'S PRE FAB CABLE -> BLUE TOOTH ENABLED ECU SCANNER -> OBD SOFTWARE.

Even though its nice to read some data from your bike/car. Its pretty much next to impossible to change / write any data into an OEM ECU with generic software like say Live data. The values like EFI ratio setting , gain setting etc are best left to preset OEM values. Even though I say its next to impossible some nerds eventually figured out how to hack into the ECU and modify the response. That's how the drifting craze caught on in Japan.

PS : Now that you know basics of ECU and OBDs, your next project is to turbo charge your Ct100 or chetak.

[ashwinprakas]

Originally Posted by srini1785

Ahh Ashwin so you are already fiddling around with a new bike. Couldn't you have waited for say a year?.

What can I say, lockdown Blues and me fingering the exhaust a while back and finding considerable soot there got me curious.

It would have been better if you also posted a connection diagram on how to read the data in your mobile or on a laptop so that wanna be nerds would be able to tap into theirs too. So in a gist I will just give this connection diagram.

ECU -> AP'S PRE FAB CABLE -> BLUE TOOTH ENABLED ECU SCANNER -> OBD SOFTWARE.

That's just about it, nothing complex once we decode wiring, in cars we directly plug into OBD port and depending on the reader you have you can sync data to your phone via Bluetooth or WiFi, the latter being more precise and expensive.

Dedicated units can be expensive and come with USB option, they can be hooked up to your Laptop.

With the cheaper ones your Android phone would do.

Torque used to be the go to app but the one Named Piston is also neat and let's you clear error codes, best of all it is Free.

Even though its nice to read some data from your bike/car. Its pretty much next to impossible to change / write any data into an OEM ECU with generic software like say Live data.

Not the least interested in changing OE values as long as I run on EFI.

This is just to get an idea of how the system is working, my idle for example is on the dot as per manufacturers recommendations but I from seeing other pre BS6 Bullets used to think it was higher from the idle vibes, which now I realise is due to most people intentionally keeping the idle low for the so called Thump Factor.

Next comes the Trim values, the STFT seems decent as it's close to 0% and the LTFT though relatively higher explains the FE.

The values like EFI ratio setting , gain setting etc are best left to preset OEM values. Even though I say its next to impossible some nerds eventually figured out how to hack into the ECU and modify the response. That's how the drifting craze caught on in Japan.

An aftermarket ECU would get the job done for around 20k IIRC, but at the same time the cost of a proper Carb Conversion is around 15k, so I believe you'll see where I'm going with this.



Only downside being that I'd have to forgo the ABS or run the stock harness as a piggyback and hope it runs well.

PS : Now that you know basics of ECU and OBDs, your next project is to turbo charge your Ct100 or chetak.

This photo is a decade old, it's me and my first Motorcycle just a couple of months after purchase.



To this day some still believe that I'm programming the Motorcycle to boost performance when in fact I'm reaching out to PSR Sir over the xBhp forum to clarify doubts when I got stuck midway fixing my bike.

Hopefully to commemorate the event I'd try recreating this with the Chetak or CT100

Regards,
A.P.

[VijayAnand1]

Hahaha! Yup, coming from a carburetted era, I am totally ears on what one has to say about the lost art of getting it right, pity the Gen Z litters. All is still not lost, you can still fiddle with the art of idle. The good guys every brand do give us a brass or a plastic screw on the EFI throttle body just so you know, the carburetted bunch don't lose the finesse.

Cheers!
VJ

[jithin23]

Awesome thread A.P. I never knew that bikes can also get connected to OBD! This is going to be interesting for DIy'ers and can give a lot of info to owners. What a coincidence that I have posted a similar topic yesterday regarding DTC codes. More power to learning new stuff

[ashwinprakas]

Originally Posted by VijayAnand1

Hahaha! Yup, coming from a carburetted era, I am totally ears on what one has to say about the lost art of getting it right, pity the Gen Z litters. All is still not lost, you can still fiddle with the art of idle. The good guys every brand do give us a brass or a plastic screw on the EFI throttle body just so you know, the carburetted bunch don't lose the finesse.

Cheers!
VJ

Though I sheepishly enjoy the admiration I get when the Bullet starts in the first kick causing society to acknowledge me as a "Real Man", the lingering thought of possibly the EFI failing me when least expected does bother me at times, the P220 at around 60k and CT100 at around 75k still running on their stock carbs that haven't been taken apart to date even for cleaning is what has set the bar too high, if not that then it was surely the video of a "Celebrity" turning his wheel with the motorcycle literally upside down in neutral.

As for idle adjustment, with the new lot of motorcycles they've done away with the manual adjustment screw, it can only be electronically adjusted.

Got to know this when I saw videos of guys lowering the idle on Bullets by inserting a tube into the IAC port. Guess the manufacturers have decided that the public isn't fit for setting their own idle.

Originally Posted by jithin23

Awesome thread A.P. I never knew that bikes can also get connected to OBD! This is going to be interesting for DIy'ers and can give a lot of info to owners. What a coincidence that I have posted a similar topic yesterday regarding DTC codes. More power to learning new stuff

Other than knowing the basics of how EFI works which I'd got profound clarity on after reading Akira's Turbo mod, I am an absolute novice.

In fact after I hit post I'd be hitting to figure out what DTC Codes are.

[ashwinprakas]

Got my first CEL!





Cleared the code and it went away;



Have ridden her for a bit and it didn't show up again.

Will keep a close eye and post updates.

Regards,
A.P.