Bad Dyno Tune - Timing Question

MountainMan said:

Ol' Blue is an '08 R3T to which I've added jards, K&N's, and Hagons. The dyno tuner I used (and wouldn't use again - not even to wash the bike) kinda screwed things up. He went for horsepower and torque and I believe completely ignored any aspect of timing. After about 4K miles, I finally figured out the noise I was hearing was pre-ignition. In the last two years I've tenderly put on about a thousand miles for fear of completely trashing it.

I've never worked it hard. Up to 80 mph on the freeway and I drive it like an old lady around town and the backroads (Warp9.9 has not hypnotized me yet). Horsepower numbers are 140+ with 150 ft lbs. Since the tune, I get 30 mpg pretty consistently. I got 37 mpg before the tune.

It finally dawned on me I could add some octane booster (I'm a little slow). I tried it the other day with about 4 oz. in four gal. and saw almost immediate improvement. The only pinging I hear now is at about 2K - 2.5K rpm with another band at about 3K - 3.5K (I'm guessing - no tach). I'm being tender and only accelerating smoothly through the gears. I haven't tried it on hills and only have about 10 miles since the addition of the booster.

My questions: Will octane booster help me until I can get down to Birmingham and have Wayne's shop do things properly? Will a 3K mile trip trash things and leave me with a boat anchor by the side of the road somewhere in eastern Wyoming? Since the timing is hosed, will octane booster actually compensate for the bad timing or am I just hiding the continuance of damage? Because I still have some pinging should I add more booster? Will the computer's variable timing be affected positively or negatively? If adding octane booster is OK, can a homemade version work or do I have to buy the spendy off-the-shelf stuff and guess about translating the car applications to our little fuel tanks? The homemade version is a mixture of toluene, diesel or Jet A, and ATF or Marvel Mystery Oil.

Thanks for your responses.

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MountainMan said:

Thanks for jogging my memory regarding alternate tunes. I do have a couple of Wayne's tunes for R3T. He sent me a Tuneboy file (.DAT) labeled POWER-TRIPP Jardine-KN R3Ta. The filename suggests the bike's setup is the same as mine. Since it's a .DAT file, I couldn't use it. The second one he sent is labeled Power-Tripp R3TouringB.HEX with no mention of the setup. I can't remember if I ever loaded the .HEX file onto Ol' Blue. Both files indicate I received them in 2011.

I only see one tune file that may be applicable on the TuneECU site: 30368Map.HEX. It mentions the aftermarket exhaust, but no mention of whether or not the air intakes are stock or something else. The file I downloaded from the TuneECU site immediately after installing my mods is labeled 20258 Jardines_exhaust_DB_Killers Map.HEX. This was the one the tuner labeled "scary lean". I don't see it on the site anymore. I remember without dyno tuning, it seemed to run fine. Without hooking it up to an analyzer I would never have know how lean it was running. This is why I'm leery of just swapping around and trying tunes not specific to the bike. Wayne's website actually makes mention of having to tune each bike individually. I was hoping I could use the octane booster as kind of a bandaid until a proper tune was available.

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