Tyre Temperature & Pressure Considerations - Motorcycles

Hi,

I race a Yamaha R3 here in Taiwan, using a AiM MXm dashlogger connected to my aRacer standalone ECU, and coupled with F/R wheel speed, F/R suspension potentiometers, front brake pressure, and oil pressure sensors. I'm interested in expanding this setup with a CAN based TPMS system so I can read tyre pressures and temperatures. From my understanding looking through the AiM website, I can expand to their CAN TPMS system if I add a CAN datahub to my current setup, and the system supports the reading of tyre pressures, temperatures, and is a flexible based system. Cool.

I'm curious how this class module on tyre pressures and tyre temperatures can be applied to motorcycle tyres. Are there any other considerations to take in account? Obviously camber and toe can't be adjusted on bikes, but what other parameters can be looked at besides tyre pressures affecting tyre temp? What tyre temperature distribution considerations do I need to take into account considering the profile of a motorcycle tyre is vastly different than a car tyre?

Also, are there any rules of thumb for ambient and track temperature and how they should dictate our base tyre pressure? For example, do lower ambient and track temps require lower pressures? Higher track temps should use generally pressures to reduce friction and contact patch? Is it okay to work slightly outside the suggested operating pressure range of the tyre depending on rider weight and pace, etc.? Hopefully you guys have some insight on these matters.

Thanks

The Aim MxM does not have a very flexible CAN setup.

The Data Hub is only for Aim's expansion modules, not generic CAN devices that are on the "ECU CAN" bus.

In order to support more than one device on the ECU CAN connection, you will have to create a custom CAN protocol with messages from both your ECU and TPMS combined, so it takes some technical knowledge about the CAN messages for each.

As for using this information to tune the performance of your bike, like any engineering project -- first get good data. Then based on the data, make a change and measure the result (laptime, rider confidence, acceleration, etc). There will only be three results of ANY change -- Better, Worse or the Same. The whole game is to figure out which result you had, and only keep the changes that make it Better!

Good Luck!

Thanks for the quick reply David, I appreciate the insights. I will have to dive deeper into how to create custom CAN protocols, cheers.