Aprilia RS660 Tech Discussion

I also just added an ABS pump bypass dongle saving 1lb of weight but maybe creating some issue or risk of faults. In Q1 or Q2, there’s a shot of Frank zip tieing the ABS pump back into Mazz’s bike as they were hunting for the electrical issue.

When mine showed the fault, the ECU seemed to reset something and I lost power and then it just stayed red, said TC disabled and I seemed to have full power still. I did notice that my data from Q1 showed a lean angle of 180 degrees so some SW or sensor issue was going on.

I figured I would run it until I felt like it was slowing me down which hasn’t happened yet.

 

We had a new engine last weekend with the ABS emulator. The bike was cutting out badly applying throttle past the apex, we lost most of the FP session. Blipper and QS were nominal. The IMU was suspect because it was reading 180 degrees all the time. Replaced the IMU which did not solve the problem in Q1. Pulled the emulator and hung an ABS pump on the side of the bike but it would crap out near full throttle. Swapped the ABS pump and throttle for Q2 and it was no better.

PADS would inventory the ABS module but could not connect to it for diagnostics. We don't use TC, but enabled it for WU in the wet, with a rain setup the problem was less severe and Mazz was able to run at the front until he was nipped on the last lap. Unfortunately the weather cleared and the track dried so we were again down on power for the race. Happy to come away without losing too much in championship points but it was not a good weekend.

The bike is very sensitive to the position of the wheel speed sensors, too small or too large a gap cause the blipper to flake. Some non-OEM rotors place the sensor too close, we shim them out to solve that problem. The rear is sensitive to the torque on the axle nut, if overtightened the swingarm will be drawn in taking the sensor too close to the ring. Some teams have had the rings damaged during tire changes but we've been lucky in that regard.

 

Does mazz use the blipper?

 

Can you share your target gap?

 

I was told the target gap is 1mm per Aprilia but I’m not sure of the tolerance. I might guess +- 0.5mm. There are little speed sensor shims made to help achieve the right gap.

I started with non-OEM LW rear rotor and it spaced the tone ring out 1mm and clashed with the ABS (speed) sensor so I got the Norton light weight rotors like Veloce uses and it puts the tone ring in the correct place. But like I mentioned, I still had some fault enunciate during the race so who knows what caused that….

 

Yes.

 

Manual says .5mm - 2mm. I've found .75mm - 1.25mm works best for our rear wheel, front can be slightly more.

 

Norton rear rotor totally killed the electronics on my bike & wouldn't let me go more than 25-30 mph...like it was in limp mode...put stock rotor back on and it was fine...never tried trouble shooting beyond measuring thickness of rotor (appeared to match stock - but don't remember the thickness)

 

Yeah, it must be related to tolerance and variation. The Norton rotor has a recess for the tone ring like the OEM rotor does so on my bike, it put the tone ring in the correct place. I think it just highlights that the speed sensor gap needs to be in the right range. I’ll have to play with axle nut torque like Knarf mentioned. I started using a torque wrench set to 115nm (spec is 120nm) instead of the 2-3 uggas by hand I used to use.

 

65 ft-lb is plenty with a wired nut. Also depends on whether you have OEM spacers or aftermarket.

 

If it helps at all, I can tell you that the cup bikes set up by the Aprilia race team don't use the auto blip. I asked about it, and they said it never works right so we don't use it. I don't know how they disable it, but it may be worth a try if you're having trouble.

On any of my bikes, if we're having cutting out problems, the first thing we try is unplugging the quick shifter. But nothing in my garage is as advanced as the RS660, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

I will fight anyone that tries to disable the auto blipper!
I know most front runners also disable it (simple setting in the menu), but for those of us not at the pointy end of the National races, it makes a huge difference.

I suspect that in general, there are a lot of SW error checks that must be passed to keep all the various electronics functions active and hiccups in a sensor signal can turn off the extra functions. Add in some device emulators (like the ABS pump emulator I just added) and there’s all sorts of things that could cause errors.

 

Curious what red alarm you had pop up I just had alarm service and alarm tc disabled start flashing without even doing anything like riding the bike

 

It just said something to the effect of TC Error and then TC Disabled. But the bike went to parc ferme so it got turned off. Hasn’t happened since then.

 

Jumping in since your alarm might be related to the issue I am having, and perhaps someone here has experienced the same problem. I ran my RS660 for the first time at Road Atlanta on Sunday. During every warm up lap, I would get a notice exiting 8 that said "Alarm, ATC disabled" or something similar. The alarm messaged seemed to pop up once I was at ~110mph or so indicated. ATC would then stay off until I cycled the power on the bike. I rode the bike on the street for like 10 miles before converting it without issue, but never at a speed close to where the issue seems to occur.

I went through the recalibration process successfully multiple times, but it didn't stop the issue. I am running stock wheels, stock rotors (though I did remove the little protector thing between the sprocket and the nuts), with an upmap race flashed ECU. I have heard that these bikes are sensitive to spacing between the tone ring and speed sensor, but with stock stuff and the calibration working correctly that doesn't seem like it should be the problem. Anyone have any experience with something similar or have any suggestions on how to proceed? Current plan is to try with the stock ECU flash, and if that doesn't work I bought another wheel speed sensor to try front and rear.

Mike

 

Mike, can you measure the gap from the wheel speed sensor to the tone ring? Is the tone ring straight and true? There are a lot of software checks done every second and if there is noise or out of range signals, the ECU will just turn off that control system. I would wonder if the UpMap did something that effects this but I really don’t know.

 

My best guess at a method to measure was placing stacks of feeler gauges between the sensor and the wheel and measuring what fit with calipers. Rear showed .9mm, front 1.6. I measured at a few different places and didn't notice any significant change in gap.

 

I was really considering one of these bikes for track use, but having some second thoughts !!!! LOL

Is there a way to log the ECU data like on kawasakis and yamahas ? it would be interesting to see moment of failure in the logging.. like you would see the (wheelspeed) RWS or FWS drop or glitch out if that was the cause..

 

Seems like the front is on the high side so maybe that is causing the ATC error issue. I’m not sure how to reduce the gap other than to put 0.5mm shims underneath the tone ring to space it closer to the sensor. Also, check the wheel speed sensor wires for any signs of damage or chaffing. That’s about as far as I could help on this one.

 

You can connect an AIM Solo2DL and record a bunch of ECU data. You won’t get raw sensor data, but wheel speed and such is in there.