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Copyright © 2017 Fabio Bizzetti, all rights reserved. NOTE: disclosure and spreading of this article is welcome and expressly permitted, provided it is exclusively in the form of a direct link to this web page: any other use is strictly forbidden and will be prosecuted according to law.




KTM / Husqvarna TPI: how to bleed/time the oil pump system without "Wake-Up" connector.


To bleed the TPI oil-injection system, it is necessary to use the "Wake-Up" connector that KTM should provide, but that is not available at this time. When disassembling the oil pump outlet pipe, or the throttle body, and in other cases, it is necessary to eliminate the air bubbles, else there's the risk of engine seizure. To do this, we need to start the automated oil pump timing procedure, also known as oil pump priming.

In this technical article we will see how to start the automated bleeding procedure without having the "Wake-Up" connector.

NOTE: the procedure works both on the original control unit and on the PowerCDI, but on the latter is not really necessary because it can be done more comfortably also through Bluetooth with a smartphone, and/or on the PC with the USB cable or the CAN bus.

The connector we are interested in is the connector of the diagnostics system:


First you need to remove the protection cap, pulling the tab towards you (NOT pressing) to extract the cap.

When this is done, you need to turn the diagnostics connector so that you can see the wires coming out and their color:


The technique to use is the logical consequence of the fact that the function we are interested in activating (located on terminal B2 of the ECU) is also available on the diagnostics connector. We just need to connect 2 pins together, and we'll get no more or less what makes the Wake-Up connector. You just have to be careful not to mistake the terminals to connect with each other, and not to touch others inadvertently, but anyone who can take the responsibility of driving a motorbike or a car has certainly the manual and mental capabilities to do this. There are 5 wires:
You need thus to turn the connector, always keeping in mind the color of the wires and their position:


Then create a bridge (not momentary, but for the whole duration of the operation) only and exclusively between the last two wires: brown and white-black. As in the following picture:


If you need to use a wire instead of a rigid metal piece as in the photo, it is advisable to start with the brown wire because in the event of an unlikely mistake in touching the wrong terminal, this way it is very difficult to do damage, even impossible it only affects one. If you start from the white-black one instead, depending on what wire you will inadvertently touch (e.g. blue-black or blue-white) you can in theory also cause damage. However, it is not complicated, just pay due attention.

But before you make the bridge, or immediately after if you have no one to help you and 2 hands are not enough, you have to open the throttle to the maximum and keep it in this position for at least 5 seconds. Then, always keeping the bridge on the connector, close the throttle and the bleeding procedure will start immediately, as seen in this video, where the first sound you hear is the fuel pump that spins for a while. Then at 0:06 the the throttle is opened (it is necessary to keep it open for at least 5 seconds), then at 0:17 the throttle is closed and so immediately after the oil pump bleeding starts:



Contrary to what you might think, the "Wake-Up" connector is not used to command the bleed procedure, but only to power on the engine control unit. With the engine off, it is the act of keeping the throttle fully open for at least 5 seconds and then close it that activates the bleed procedure (if this action is what the ECU detects to its "awakening"), but of course if the control unit is not powered, it will not do anything. For this, you should use the "Wake-Up" connector, or the bridge described above.

In summary:
NOTE: it is not necessary to remove the seat each time, the connector is also accessible from the air filter box, just drop it down and, by removing only the air filter box cover (as in accessing the filter), you will also have access to the diagnostics connector, and thus to the procedure covered by this technical article.

Considering that in the case of overturning of the motorcycle it is not excluded that air enters the oil-injection system and that the procedure, which is carried out with the unavailable "Wake-Up" connector or with substitutes such as this, is nevertheless not very quick, especially during a race, it is advisable to bring the electrical line corresponding to the white-black and brown wires (which is then the chassis ground, so you can even avoid the latter) directly to the handlebars and install a small watertight switch (the current that passes is not high, it is in the order of a hundred mA) so that in the event of a bike overturn or other cause that lead to suspect that air has been introduced into the oil mixer circuit, you just need to get off the bike and while you look at the transparent tube that goes from the oil pump outlet to the throttle body, open the throttle (keeping it in this position) and operate the switch, leave the throttle open for 5 seconds, then close it and thus make bleed the system as quickly as possible. You can install the switch near the oil pump, as it is still advisable to follow all the operation visually, even to see if there are any bubbles in the system (in the video you see a micro-bubble at the beginning of the bleed operation).
If you accidentally forget the switch on "ON", nothing serious will happen, but when the engine is off, the control unit will continue to absorb current from the battery, with consequences easy to guess.




Copyright © 2017 Fabio Bizzetti, all rights reserved. NOTE: disclosure and spreading of this article is welcome and expressly permitted, provided it is exclusively in the form of a direct link to this web page: any other use is strictly forbidden and will be prosecuted according to law.

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LAST UPDATED on December 16, 2017