We’ve known John, the owner of this GSX-R for years. 8,000 miles ago we rebuilt the engine and gave it a mild tune with new camshafts, and set it up with a Power Commander. It made about 188bhp when we gave it back to him. Time has passed, Power Commanders have become a little outdated and he wanted to upgrade with a full ECU remap…
He also wanted a Cordona quickshifter fitted. So we started by removing the Power Commander, and plugging into the ECU for the remap. The advantages here are obvious; we de-restricted the ignition in the lower gears, took out the speed restrictor and also changed the opening point of the secondary butterflies (they are controlled per gear) so they opened earlier for a bit more low-down grunt.
The fuelling was next for mapping, to suit the engine, then the ignition – we gave it a bit more for midrange snap. Fitting the Cordona was the last job and, as ever, went easily.
In truth, peak power was down by 3bhp from when we tuned it. If this was a race engine it would have been refreshed to maintain the top-end, but the ECU remap perked it up pretty much everywhere else.
Power Commander out, ECU remap in, plus a Cordona PQ8 quickshifter…
