2021 Hawk DLX
 

Hi all!

Any word on the 2021

About the only thing that could elevate the DLX for me is better headlight. I have been super happy with my 2020.

I am so glad to hear! This late in the year I am waiting for the 2021s before ordering. Super excited!

Understandable to wait at this point :) This might turn into a bit of a ramble.

Especially now with being on the cusp of doing some cheap (read: free) tuning on the bike, I have no regrets going fuel injected. I have documented pretty much all of the EFI system, and its just all off the shelf stuff you can easily source. The only sensor I still need to identify is the cylinder head temp sensor. I have owned a number of Chinabikes now, and I am a hobbyist on playing around with fuel injection and so the DLX caught my eye. I understand carb tuning and all that, but prefer EFI.

This bike runs GREAT in every weather condition I've ridden it, from Summer humid heat to cooler winter temps.

I am still considering converting the bike over to using a Speeduino though vs. the Delphi MT05.2 for more control, and it should be somewhat trivial to do.

I did swap to the Brozz style swing arm, and have never been a fan of the style of tensioners the Hawk ships with (on any bike). I do wish the 2020 had shipped with stainless brake lines, maybe if you're lucky they'll change that up for 2021. I just bought some and put them on myself.

Love it @gimpster!! Great to hear the parts can be found, am a bit skeptical myself of going to a EFI China bike, but hey if the parts can be found I am all in!! Glad to hear you are able to find replacements. Am dying to see someone put up an actual 2021 Hawk lol will see if anything is different from the 2020 model when it does come out! Cheers and happy holidays!

Side note, love your website!! @Gimpster! Way to give back to the community going to give it a thorough read through!

Hey Gimpster, I've had my '20 Hawk DLX for about a month now and have just turned 350 miles. I use it for exploring the many gravel roads in the nearby national forest. The only issue I have with this bike is that when cold it runs like absolute crap. Much bucking and surging from off idle to quarter throttle. Openings above half throttle seem ok, but I don't really like to do that with a cold engine. When the engine warms up it runs a lot better, but some slight surging is still noticeable. Since I've never had a Chinese bike before I was wondering if this was normal for these. I have two fuel injected bikes in the garage and both run fine when cold (both German). Is this something that can be cured or should I just live with it? I figured when I bought the bike the EFI would be 'Look, but don't touch'.

Just discovered your web site, but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Thanks.

Gimpster - Great website. Lots of information about the ECU system. My knowledge of EFI is pretty low right now. I have a lot of reading to do.

My website making skills are pretty much crap as you can tell, not to mention I ramble too much... but I appreciate it. Just so I'm clear, my intention there is not to promote any products or make money off affiliate links. I have a job, and it isn't Chinese motorcycles.

I am mostly just amused to see what other bikes / automotive applications they took ideas from. Time has been short lately, but I have a lot of little updates I need to post about the brakes.

That is one thing I would love to see improved on the DLX I guess, the front brake pad sweep on the rotor. They put a much bigger (outer diameter) rotor on the Hawk ... yet the pad only sweeps about half of it. Finding a deeper caliper + making a bracket to utilize it would be a fun project. Especially with good EBC pads, stainless lines and quality fluid my bike brakes well... but it still pains me to see that front rotor so under utilized.


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I use the bike same as you, just going down old abandoned rail lines, dirt roads and stuff like that. I've been riding a long time, and I've had a couple car vs. bike incidents that make me not want to street ride much anymore.

I have about ~400 miles on it now. I bought this over a Honda CR250L if you can believe that. It wasn't really the money that held me back, but I knew I'd only be riding this 2-3 times a month at best. I love Honda's, but thats a lot of money to have sit in the garage doing nothing. Not to mention my local Honda dealer is ridiculous, and wont budge off MSRP on bikes they've had sitting on the showroom floor 2+ years.


How cold is cold where you're at? I am in Florida (Central, East Coast) and like only about 10 feet above sea level. So basically the most optimal conditions ever. My bike runs VERY rich at cold idle, like you can smell the unburnt fuel big time. It has stalled once on me, but never bucks. As a matter of habit, I always let my air cooled bikes warm up a couple minutes before I take off down the road anyway. Being you're in Indiana, I can only imagine that weather only makes the ECU run even richer than here when its dead cold.

My suspicion is the factory was a little too over aggressive with cold warm up strategy to try and get the catalytic converter lit up? Again, that is me guessing. The other possibility is they are over aggressive with fuel on the cylinder head temp enrichment. IE: the cooler the head, the more fuel... just like you would do on a water cooled engine.

One tuning issue I ran into this summer was: when the cylinder head temp got HOT (was really hot out, and I'd been whipping the bike) I could feel a pretty drastic reduction in timing until I drove it slow and on the road for ~5 mins. Like you could literally just feel the bike fall on its face power wise, and then after it cooled down power came back. I should put an oil cooler on the bike is what that told me.

The other thing my DLX does is backfire, even when warmed up, on deceleration/coasting in gear. So something is up with the tuning on deceleration fuel cutoff (DFCO). It is a very Harley-esq backfire, for lack of a better description. I always run a spark arrestor anyway, but I am not a big fan of backfires like that if I can help it.

I just don't know much about MT05.x tuning or tables to know how we could fix some of these minor issues. This is kinda why I'm toying with the idea of converting the bike over to a Speeduino. Not because the MT05 is terrible, but its a bit of a blackbox. It's actually really surprising to me how little is out there given how much this ECU is used on power equipment (including lawn mowers!).

Overall, the bike is tuned OK ... but there are tweaks that would help people in cooler or higher elevations I'm sure.

Hi Gimpster, I just joined after discovering the Hawk DLX EFI. have not bought yet but exploring how to do EFI tuning after porting and other modifications. You seem to be leading the charge on Hawk EFI.

BitEdit seems to have plenty of functionality except for reflashing. (it only reads and modifies an existing hex file). Do you think this is lacking significantly for DLX performance tuning (e.g. porting mods)?

What are you using to read the ECU binary?

Gimpster, I bought the Hawk for just about the same reason you did. I was about 3 days away from buying a Versys-X 300 when I started thinking about how many miles I would actually be putting on the thing, especially because I have three road bikes in the garage. I decided to 'cheap out', and have been pleasantly surprised. I did change the sprockets to 17/44 and added a cheap windshield and hand guards (mostly for the wind protection). I will ride the bike all winter and ride in temperatures as low as 37 or 38. Anything colder than that and I get nervous about ice on the road. I haven't experienced any backfiring at all.

I also noticed the brake pad sweep on the disc. Mine looks to be about 70% of the disc, with the sweep going to past the outside edge of the disc. I haven't taken the caliper off yet to look at it to see if the whole pad is contacting the disc. I did change the front brake hose to a stainless braided one and it seems to work much better. This may be due to the pads bedding in and the fact that I bled the brakes quite a bit when I changed the hose. I'll probably go with better pads soon.

I'm reading up on the EFI system and will be looking at the HUD ECU Hacker software this winter.

Hi Gang! Anyone find the 2021 HAWK DLX EFI yet? Still have my eyes open! TX power sports says they are still 2020 models lol

End of July 2021 I bought a DLX from powersportsmax.com (MaxPro). I assumed that the bike would be a 2021 model. I sadly found out that the VIN decodes to a 2017 Hawk. When I asked MaxPro about this I got the story that "nothing has changed since 2017". Is that true?

Wow...that should be illegal...to sell them as a certain year but they're really not! When I bought my Bashan, the date was 4/26/2021 but the vin said 2020 and so did the DMV. I did expect that though. Crazy!

I don’t think we had the DLX version in 2017 ,i am guessing around 2019 or so they came out but not really sure .Are you sure you have a dlx? I don’t think there has been many changes on standard Hawks in the last several years ,they are what they are .