Spyder Tech School part 1 "full version"
As most of you know by now I love to take things apart and see how it works and to make improvements to my personal needs or wants. The Spyder was one of the first machines that I would say somewhat intimidated me. I've never owned anything that had so many sensors controlling various functions of the operation of the unit. This was not some chopper that you could throw a motor and a trans in with a handful of wires and drive it out of the shop. I had some experience with tuning a fuel injected motor but that was about as "high tech" as anything I had ever dealt with.
It wasn't long after owning a Spyder that I found it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be to work on and maintenance items like oil and tire changes were really not much different than any other motorcycle. Where the Spyder requires special skills and equipment is when there are codes that pop up that tells you there is a problem with a function of some system in the unit like the DPS, VSS or ABS. The Spyder has a lot of abbreviations that a good tech and even a owner needs to know. Most of these are handled though a system called BUDS. This system will help the tech diagnosis the problem with the unit and sometimes even make the repair on the computer. Like it or not this is the age we live in where computers control everything and if you want work on today's vehicles you need to know how use the tools that now control these machines.
Having said all that brings me to the beginning of this story. I run a Spyder forum called SpyderLovers.com and have become one of the go to guys when people have a problem with their Spyder. Like I said I enjoy working on things and I also like helping folks when I can. it's a good feeling when you can give some advise or twist a wrench and get someone going that was having some sort of problem. Some of these problems can easily be trouble shot through the message boards just by past experiences but some are more complex than others and needs to be taken to a dealer to accurately diagnose the problem. I never want to give bad advice or incorrect advise and I've been somewhat limited because I've not had the training that a Spyder tech has had and most of what I know is by hands on experience with the tools I have to work with.
While I was in Maggie Valley for the Owners Event I was asking one of the techs some questions that had came up on the board and about some of the changes that had been made on the 2011 Spyders. I've been very fortunate to have a open communication line with all the head techs at BRP because of my involvement with the RT5 and now the Spyder Five program. One of the things we did with the RT5 program was to report back to the tech any problems or issues we saw on our preproduction units. While asking these questions I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime, at least to me it was. It was suggested that I go through the tech school at BRP to get a hands on feel of the inner working of the Spyder so I could better understand the unit and be able to give better and advice to the members of SpyderLovers.
A few days after the Owners Event I got a call that they had an opening for me to take the class the following week. I was hoping to have a little time so I could catch up from the Lamonster BBQ event but I wasn't going to miss this opportunity so I told them to sign me up. The class is normally a 3 day class but they added another day to dig a little deeper into the RT. Now understand the words "School" and "Class" frighten me and the last "school" I had been in was a driving school. None of what I know now came from school and all of it has come by doing. I've never been very "book smart" but I do know where to look when I need answers. At 52 years old I was a little freaked out about going back to any type of school but this is something I really wanted to know more about and there was no better opportunity than this.
The class started on Monday in Wausau WI. That was a 888 mile trip for me on the RT. It was a great ride there and I'm going to work on my RT while I'm here too. So class starts at 8 am and runs till 5 pm. There are a total of 8 of us in the class with two instructors. We were broke into two teams that worked together and then we paired up with another tech to do the work. I was the only guy there that wasn't employed as a technician. My partner Steve works for Ride Now and is a pretty good wrench and we worked well together.
This is Perry with BRP checking our valve clearance on the Rotax 998 SE5
So day one we go through the intro to the class and what we were going to be learning the next few days. This is what we did the first day.
- Electrical System overview
- Schematic exercise
- Basic testing procedures
- DESS operation
- Key coding
- Gauge fault code retrieval
- Engine Overview
- Engine Management system
- Fault code understanding
- BUDS
- Valve shimming
- Cam Timing
The first thing we did was to learn how to read the electrical road map of the RS. This is where I knew I was out of my league. I have very little experience reading schematics and we had to take a colored felt pin and trace all the power circuits to each module and separate the high voltage side and the low voltage side of the relays. We then had to trace the grounds and power to the ECM so we knew how to check each component. I think I did the worst and needed the most help out of all the other students but I did learn a lot and I mostly get it now. It's going to take a little more hands on time for it to really sink in.
So after that exercise we went over to the Spyder and there's a box on top of the Spyder that had switches that they would throw that would cause a problem and we had to go through what we just learned and trace down the wires till we found the problem and then report the problem and the fix to the instructor. That part was kind of fun.
We learned how to program keys on the RS and the RT. That was no big deal but if you don't do it right you're not going anywhere. Once again it was good to get a hands on demo of that.
So then we get into something that I really liked, checking your valves for proper clearance. Two of us had a motor that we had to check that we knew had improper clearance. It was just a matter of rotating the crank to TDC on each cylinder and replacing the shims with the proper shim to get the clearance needed. After that was checked we then took it back apart and put the wrong shims in so the next team could do the same exercise. That was pretty easy.
Each team had their own work stations
The next project was cam timing and that's where we removed the cams and chains and had to line everything back up where it needed to be. This was a little more involved and you really had to pay attention to make sure you got all your timing marks right, if not very bad things happen. We did pretty good on that job too.
We ended the day with an overview of what we had learned and what the next day will bring. I know one thing for sure, I'll know a lot more about my Spyders from this four day class than I've learned in the 3 years of working on them without this training. If I left today I would walk away with some very valuable knowledge and I still have three days to go. This knowledge will go on the Lamonster Garage Tech page on SpyderLovers for all to view when I'm done. I hope this will be of help to other owners.
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and joined the forum. ![[IMG]//C:/Users/Lenny/Downloads/VisitedStatesMap.jpg[/IMG]](signaturepics/sigpic7698_1.gif)
Originally Posted by LennyO
I think you'll love the RT, I do.
