TFI Installed Today

[Todd]

Like BD I have been playing with the resistors and various other "tricks" to make my Nomad have a little richer mixture over the past year or so. Hey, its fun tinkering and trying to out engineer the engineers that designed this thing to be Ultra-EPA compliant.

Anyway, some of you may remember that my bike seems to run OK with the open right side K&N (left side is stock) and the V&H baggers. I did adjust the TPS up just a tiny bit way back before the summer.

So I decided that I would drop by Custom Dynamics yesterday and pick up a TFI as an after Christmas gift to myself. CD is only about 20 miles from my main office so I ran by there on the way home. The folks in there are great and really helpful. I mentioned KawaNOW and all the TFIs that had been, and would be ordered....they said they had sold many 2050STs in the past month or so. Anyway, walked outta there with mine for $172 total :) :)

I was off today for my son's wisdom teeth extraction, so after I got him home and settled (he was knocked out on some really good drugs ;) and Mom was inside with him) I went outside to the garage to tackle this little project.

First I removed the resistor I had installed in the temp sensor circuit. I had wired that with connectors in anticipation of removal someday, so that was merely unplugging a pigtail I had made with the resistor in it, and plugging the original wires back together. I decided that the adjustment I had made to the TPS was so minor, and within the OE specs for Kawasaki, that I would leave it where it was.

I sat the side stand on a block so the bike was more/less sitting straight up, but not enough that if my clumsy a$$ turned the wrong way and hit it by mistake, it would turn over. I then removed the rear seat section and then the main saddle. I removed the left side cover (careful not to break those tabs...several on here have :( ) No Cali bike here, so no canister in there taking up space.

I then removed the two rear tank bolts and the attached wire hangers/holders and disconnected the two plugs on top of the battery (these wires run through the holder attached with the left rear tank bolt) Be careful disconnecting these, they are delicate and have a tab lock that must be sprung before pulling them apart. This just gave me a little more room to raise the rear of the tank without stressing those two wiring clusters. I carefully raised the rear of the tank somewhere in the neighborhood of 4" and supported it with a spare little 12" or so piece of 2X4 that I had laying around the garage. This gave plenty of access room for the injector connectors.

I then routed the wires/plugs from the TFI through the hole already in the left side storage compartment that lead to the battery area, and then up the middle frame member to the area of the injector plugins. Seems to make for a nice tidy job and free from wear or sharp areas. Left everything loose in order to have plenty of wire to move around with up under the tank.

Got my big ole' meathooks up under the tank and with a little persuasion and only a tiny bit of a cuss word unsnapped the front stock injector plug (you will see these from the left side of the bike, between the cylinders and they are light blue). Be careful with these too...I tend to hate these little snap on connectors as I usually try to force them a little too much and have broken my share of them. Anyway, with the matching lead from the TFI, I plugged it into the injector and plugged the corresponding other side into the OE harness plug. I repeated this for the rear cylinder. Without removing the tank, it is a little cramped doing this, but be patient...if my big ole hands can get in there, yours can.

Pulled all the slack out of the wire back to the control module in the left side storage compartment, ziptied the wires up nicely in the middle of the frame, and lowered the tank back into it's original position (be careful here that you have not pulled any vent, fuel, electrical, or vacuum lines under the tank and the none are pinched....my fuel line had gotten in the way and I had to ease it back into place). Reinstalled the two rear tank bolts and wiring tabs and the two connectors on top of the battery and was ready to go.

I improvised on the "eye" ground connector. I did not want to completely remove the ground bolt from the battery, so I used a dremel tool (wire snips or diagonal cutters would work too) to cut the end out of the loop making it essentially a split blade type connector. Then I just loosened the ground bolt on the battery, slid the connector under it, and then tightened the ground bolt back up.

This all took around 30 minutes.

So I am ready to go and tune it in, right ?

(This is my dumbass confession for this little job).

I had not bothered to read the directions up to this point, so I fire up the bike and take a look at the LEDs on the TFI module and only the red #3 pot is on and steady...... WAIT, THIS IS NOT RIGHT...ONLY THE #1 GREEN ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE ON !! Where the hell did I put that box, and did it have directions in it !!! OK so I found the box and quickly read the highlights....yeah yeah, whatever, let me call the support line....nope, closed for the holiday....OK, let me call BD, he just put his in...Am I missing something here ?? ??.....Damn, BD isn't answering either.....DAMN........

So I look at it and look at it (OK maybe I said a inappropriate word or two) and then think, "hey wait, they did say to set to the recommended settings first, then tune it in". So I grab my screw driver and run the #4 pot up to 9 and WALAH !!! On comes a steedy green light from #1 and #3 is off (and still set to 1:00). PERFECT!

I run the RPMs up to around 2K and adjust the #1 pot to the highest and best running setting...seems for me to be between 2:00 and 4:00.....4 is just starting to load a little bit so I settled on 3 for now (also based of many of the suggestions and postings of other members on here). I adjust the "accelerator pump" #2 pot and test it by quickly punching open the throttle and 6:00 seems to be good for a starting point.

It was only 43 here today, but that can't stop a test run. Here's my observations...... A lot more power through the entire range of RPMs. Like BD has said, it's not a rocket, but it has more power...seat of the pants feels like several more horses....but the place you really feel it is when you roll on at speed above 20 or 30 mph. It is really evident when you are going above 60 mph and call for some horses...much more responsive. Also, the bike seems to run much smoother. I dont know if that part is my imagination or not.

I am certainly going to be tinkering with it for a little while and seeing what the mileage is. I don't really mind loosing some MPG if the performance is enhanced, and, I can always back it down a touch if going on a long trip where I want to stretch out the stops between fill ups.

Thanks to all you guys that have posted your TFI experiences prior to this, it helped a bunch with the decision to go ahead and buy one, and with the install (Hell, I almost got away with not even reading the literature that came with it )

Install/Adjust even with my temporary brain fart was under an hour.