Engineering the Raze Wingman ECU

­The engine strategy is the behind-the-scenes flow chart of algorithms that the ECU uses to run the engine. ­ There are millions of engine strategies out there.

OEM dirt bike manufactures like KTM and Yamaha use one of the most basic fuel injection engine strategies out there – it’s called Alpha N. Even though it’s simplistic, this engine strategy works great for dirt bikes that are designed to run at sea level with wide open throttle. But when you take a dirt bike, add a snow bike track and get it 8000ft above sea level you really start to see why this engine strategy is does not work for snow bikes. One of the reasons is Alpha-N is very poor at dealing with hills (think about engine load going up and down hills at a constant throttle position), temperature variations and just about anything else that you’d care about as a snow bike rider.

Alpha-N is also sometimes called “TPS maps” because the only sensor that is used for determination of fueling is the Throttle Position Sensor and measured RPM, or how fast the motor is spinning.  Fuel and timing requirements for the engine are expressed as a function of RPM and TPS. Usually this data is manipulated on a few Excel spreadsheets – that’s how simple it is. This is how aftermarket performance guy and bring a machine into and dyno room and literally lay out a fueling and timing table across a grid. When you hear guys talk about “tuning” this is the data they are changing. Most of the time, the “tuning” or maps available through flashed ECU’s only change the ignition timing since that is where all the power is felt.

Aplpha N doesn’t work in the mountain environment because we know that we can apply more ignition timing at higher altitude. We have to apply less down low. If there isn’t a big load on the motor, we can apply more ignition timing. If there is a big load on the motor, we actually want less to more create torque. All of these factors have to be monitored and adjusted for a snow bike to run properly and that’s something that Alpha N cannot do.

While even a little more power sounds good to some riders, we’ve found is that you can get a heck of lot more and better performance if you don’t use an Alpha N engine strategy at all. The only problem was finding an engine strategy that worked specifically for snow bikes – but that didn’t exist. So, we engineered one from scratch.

Our approach to creating an engine strategy for snow bikes was to look at it from an OEM’s perspective. We knew we would need complex ignition timing curve based on altitude. We knew we would need fueling compensation for mountain environments, track load, engine load, temperature and everything else that reduce snow bike performance. We spent thousands of hours in the mountains calculating the data and cross checking the variables. We then took this information and input it into a program called MathLabs and wrote a specific engine strategy for snow bikes.

To put our engine strategy vs Alpha N in perspective, our engine strategy is like a 1 gigahertz computer processor clocking data at 1 billion times per second. When you are looking at the OEM ECU for dirt bikes or our competitors ECU’s that are based on Alpha N engine strategies that is 50-60 hertz – or basically a billion times slower than ours.

Our ECU includes the first ever engine strategy designed for snow bikes and the only one on the market that will automatically compensate for altitude, barometric pressure changes, intake air temperature, track load and has a fueling curve that gives the bottom end torque riders want.

TLDR: Hear from Raze Motorsports President, Chris McKinney, as he explains the engineering behind the Raze Wingman ECU.