Hawk DLX running lean
 

Hey everyone! I am new to the forum world. Please don't hesitate to ask me for any missing details that people usually put in their posts.

I bought a Hawk DLX last year and I have about 600 miles on it now. I noticed the other night that I was riding that the pipe was glowing red. I didn't think that I was riding it hard enough to cause that. Top speed on that is 68 MPH and I was only doing 40-45 MPH through town. I thought that can't be right and I am assuming it is running very lean. Possibly lean enough to potentially cause engine damage. I haven't pulled the plug out yet to confirm. I looked through some other forums here and I see people talking about them running lean but it looks like they are all carbureted models. Has anyone re-tuned one of these? How did you go about doing it? I have never messed with fuel mapping before.

Thanks in advance!

You would need a way to interface with the computer ECM/ECU and some software to be able tune the fuel maps on it. I thought I saw a post somewhere about someone trying to connect to the hawk ECU

Here's that thread

https://chinariders.net/showthread.p...ghlight=tuning

Just on general principles, the first thing I would do is check the valve adjustment. If the pipe is glowing red close to the cylinder head, that tells me that too much heat is being trapped in the head because the exhaust valve is not opening sufficiently for proper transfer of the spent combustion gases.

These Chinabikes seem to be notorious for having too-tight valve clearances from the factory. I'm getting a Lifan X-pect next week, and before I even fire it up I will check the valve and spark plug gaps.

A basic rule of thumb for diagnosing problems in anything is start with first principles. In this case, fuel, spark, air, timing. If all that checks out, then go into more complex issues. Always try the simple and cheap fixes first.

And welcome from a fellow noob.