GOD IS IN THE MACHINE With the oxygen sniffer nestled in the exhaust , Brett started to look at the air / fuel ratio . At 10 % throttle it was over 17:1 . Brett explained , “ This is why it stalls easily . It ’ s running very lean , there ’ s basically no fuel , so it can ’ t make any power .” This 10 % throttle area is where it spends most of its time off-road and roughly where it is at 100kh / h , so it ’ s very sensitive to throttle movement too . The next job was to see if we could get into the ECU to do anything about any of it . After connecting up the DIMSport ECU reader to see what map was installed , Brett explained that the map serial number is different to that of the KTM 690s he ’ s done before , so we couldn ’ t use a previous mapping - they have to be the same . It turns out the map number for the ES700 Enduro is the same as the SM700 Supermoto , which he already had in his ECU reader . This was good . It meant he could get on with remapping it . Brett says that the system he uses is good , but they ’ re software engineers based in Italy who can sort maps quickly , even with the time difference involved , but it still takes until the next day to get them through . This is why getting your bike tuned is not always a turn up and get it done thing , it can be a couple of days
waiting for files and doing the dyno runs . Once the map was downloaded on the laptop , Brett set about tweaking the fuelling , adding 3 % fuel at different points in the fuel map to make it richer and bring it closer to the optimum air / fuel ratio ( for the best combination of power and economy ). This is called ‘ stoichometric ’ and is when there ’ s just the right ratio of air to ensure complete combustion of the fuel . In a gasoline engine this is approximately 14.7:1 , so the 17:1 standard figure is really quite lean . He also turned off the deceleration fuel-cut , which reduces emissions by cutting fuel when the throttle is closed , but it leads to a dry inlet tract , so there ’ s a slight snatch when opening the throttle and the injectors start to spray fuel again . Connecting the ECU reader up to the diagnostic port it was then a 10-minute wait for the new map to be written to the ECU . While we were waiting I asked if the individual rider modes could be changed , but it turns out that the fuelling and ignition maps are the same for both road and off-road modes , it ’ s the throttle mapping that changes - something which can be accessed , but we didn ’ t touch it this time . As for the ABS , there ’ s no option with aftermarket software / hardware to get into those settings .