Words and Pictures by Kenn Stamp

OK so the intro "The power to change" was a little silly....OK a lot silly, but accurate. It's what it does; gives you, the rider, the power and ability to change how much fuel your bike gets. Does this increase the HP? Yes and no. One of the funniest things I hear all the time is this line; "So I put a pipe and a Power Commander on my bike and it gained like 20 horsepower!  I was on I-4 yesterday pulling 190mph!". The funny part of this is that it is always some 600cc sportbike owner that says it.

So let's get that out of the way first; a pipe and Power Commander is not going to gain you 20 hp. Probably not even 10hp. Maybe 5-7hp but most likely 3-5hp. Sorry to bust everyone's bubble but modern motorcycles just don't have that kind of power gains bottled-up inside them unless major work is done to some pretty expensive parts.

So then what does a Power Commander do? And most importantly is it worth spending money on?

We'll use our Project FJR as the example in this discussion since we have just installed a Power Commander PCIII USB on it (and by "just" I mean a few months ago). 

When we installed the Power Commander the bike was still stock; stock exhaust and stock air box. Installation itself was a snap as it is a plug and play set-up; just locate the appropriate plug, disconnect it, plug the Power Commander in-line, and you are done. We mounted the Power Commander under the rider's seat as that is pretty much the only place to put it on the FJR.

The Power Commander comes with factory pre-set maps for a variety of generic applications. Since our bike was still stock we set it for the baseline setting; stock everything with the O2 sensor still plugged-in. The biggest change that we felt was the fuel injection was a lot smoother. Even the bike itself was smoother and I found myself going faster than I thought since the vibrations at any given RPM were less than they were before. My guess is that from the factory the bike was probably a little lean which caused the bike to run rougher than it should. Possible? Who knows, but that is my theory and I'm sticking to it. All I know for sure is that right off the bat the Power Commander smoothed out the little dips and surges that the bike had before.

Our next item on the list to install was the Muzzys 4-2-1 full exhaust system (you can read that article here ). Muzzys sent us their map for an FJR with their system installed so that was loaded into the laptop and then down into the Power Commander. Being able to program and change your Power Commander program from your laptop is really cool; plus your neighbors think you are uber-smart when they walk out and see you sitting there pondering over your laptop while wires run to your motorcycle. It only gets better when you tell them that you are "Harmonizing the fuel-to-air amalgam to achieve a greater efficiency in the burned-to-unburned ratio thereby increasing the nominal power output". Usually by the "burned-to-unburned" part their eyes glaze up and it really doesn't matter the accuracy of your statement as they just nod and say something like "huh....well good luck with that" and walk away. This technique should not be tried however if your neighbor is a rocket scientist or engineer as they will probably come over and offer to help. This of course is completely unwanted as you will not understand anything that they say and your bluff will be called. You've been warned.

With the Power Commander installed along with the exhaust we did see a gain in HP but the biggest star in that was the pipe with the Power Commander in a supporting role.

What we did next though is where the Power Commander comes into it's own.

If you want more power you need more air; more air means more fuel is needed. To get the air we did an air box modification that basically opens-up both sides of the airbox and removes a rearward facing snorkel. This, in theory, will allow about twice as much air into the airbox. We also added an aftermarket filter for even better airflow into the engine. Once we did this mod we took the bike out for a 20 minute ride to see exactly what the difference was. We still had the O2 sensor hooked-up since we were still using the Muzzys map. Right away the difference was noticeable....power was hard hitting from the mid-range on up to redline. But after that initial run through the RPMs the bike seemed to be getting softer on the top end again. By the time the ride was over the bike felt the same as it did before the airbox mod and filter were done.

Right then, so time to be illegal. Dynojet, 2WF.com,  the Federal Government, nor your State Government endorse or recommend the changing or removal of any of your motorcycle's emission gear, so if you do you are on your own...don't blame either Dynojet or us if you get in trouble or something breaks on your bike. OK with that out of the way we shall proceed with our own illegal modification.

A quick lift of the tank to get to the plug and the O2 sensor wasn't going to be communicating with anyone ever again. After that we took off  the seat and used the buttons on the Power Commander that allow you to make gross adjustments to the map. We went with the middle (baseline) setting on the low RPM range as not much more air is coming in at that point, bumped the mid-RPMs up one notch, and the high-RPMs up two notches and went back out. Much, much better. No stumbles, or burps in the fuel injection and no noticeable holes or dips in the powerband. Power down low really hasn't changed from before the airbox mod which is to be expected; not a lot more air coming in at those RPMs. Sweep the needle above 5k RPMs and the demeanor gets, well, meaner. Where the bike used to noticeably start running out of power at 8500-9000 RPMs, it now pulls hard all the way to redline. You can actually feel the bike surge underneath you whenever you shift gears during full power acceleration runs. It really is quite addictive and the drop of 3 miles per gallon shows how much fun it is to keep the bike spooled-up into the higher revs. Once we get the bike back on the dyno and actually tune it in we'll post-up the final HP numbers.

If you are going to be modifying your bike for better performance a Power Commander is a great way to go. Sure there are a few other ways to go about changing your fuel ratio but none of them have the widespread distribution base, tons of tuning centers, or long term testing and track record of the Power Commander by Dynojet.

Check out all of the models that Dynojet has a Power Commander for at their website: www.powercommander.com