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KTM 1290 1190 Coolant Loss Issue

As I continue down my path of long term KTM platform ownership (and hardcore abuse), I see the same repeat lessons issued. After a long and tedious troubleshooting processd, I've isolated the coolant loss on my 2014/2015 1290 Superduke as... you've guessed it if you ever owned an older LC8 before: water pump impeller shaft.

But wait, aren't these completely redesigned after the confirmed issue on first and second generation LC8 platforms (950 and 990)? Yes and no. Let's first talk about the previous failure mode.

The 990 water pump sits in the right hand side case/clutch cover and is driven by a solid metal shaft that is driven by the engine internals. It is secured by a bearing and seals:

The metal piece couples to the engine drive and ends up wearing a groove at the sealing surfaces of the spring loaded seals on either end of the circlip. There have been aftermarket units designed with hardened metals and coatings to increase the longevity of this design.

In the later version of the LC8, the shaft is no longer removable and instead, a coated removable (and internally o-ring sealed) sleeve acts as an interface to near-identical spring loaded seals.

While this may count as an improvement (in durability or in service cost), it is far from perfect. To my surprise, KTM does not recommend a service schedule on this item, they merely advise to check coolant level at every oil change (15000km).

While the [http://www.ktm950.info/how/Orange%20Garage/Cooling%20System/waterpump/Rebuild/ktm_water_pump.html](previous failure mode) would foul the paper water filter and cause a low pressure oil light, the newer engine does not exhibit these warning signs. Whether this is due to different oil PSI thresholds, improved rotor pumps or much more effective PCV/moisture evap abilities is beyond me.

The primary symptom I've been able to narrow down is rising oil temperatures and sputtering coolant out of the overflow as the system is unable to maintain pressure correctly. This problem will escalate exponentially until almost no coolant remains in the radiator, causing full coolant temp bars on the right and the entire dashboard to flash in an emergency state urging you to shut the machine off. It is possible to overheat and cause permanent damage to the headasket, I will follow KTM's coolant check guidelines meticulously going forward.

Another interesting item of note is that KTM updated the water pump impeller and housing design going from 2014 to 2015 MY 1290 Superduke R. It is visually evident that the new design flows more water, for anyone interested in an upgrade.

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Tuning AFR With Bazzaz

It was time for another round of fine-tuning the fueling on my bike, so I decided to take the time to note some good practices for those who may be new to this.

Fueling Piggybacks

Bazzaz and Power Commander represent a class of bike fueling controllers that depend on the factory ECU to do the majority of the work and sit on it's back, making small adjustments to it's output. In terms of wiring this looks like inline filtering. Coils can also be filtered like this, in Bazzaz's case for TC and QS, but the main benefit of a piggyback is the fueling map, so we're taking interest in injector pulse width here.

Exhibit A (factory): [ECU] ---> factory wiring harness ---> [injector]

Exhibit B (piggyback inline filtering): [ECU] ---> factory wiring harness --> piggyback wiring harness --> [Piggyback ECU] --> piggyback wiring harness --> [injector]

Usually accompanied with a wideband oxygen sensor (a sensor that signals not only if the mixture is rich or lean, but also [B]by how much[/B]), these systems can create 2D maps to hit the desired fueling mixtures, using a logging-based feedback loop. On Power Commander there may now be actual realtime loops, as well as timing adjustment.

Operation Principle For the feedback loop to work correctly, the factory pulse width variance must be locked down, so factory oxygen sensors are replaced with static resistors. For bikes with secondary air injection systems, those ports are blocked off to limit fresh O2 entering the downstream. Once the parameters are locked down, aside from the narrow atmospheric pressure or air temperature deltas, the factory ECU will operate consistently. Proper grounding of the ECU, the piggyback ECU, the resistors and subsequently the wideband O2 sensor is of paramount importance, as impedance will be used to determine fuel trim.

The fundamental method of operation is to use low latency IC electronics to intercept the injector pulse signal. For parts of the map that require more fuel, the IC will immediately send the pulse back out to the output for the injector, but once the factory pulse has stopped, the piggyback will elongate the signal the injector is receiving, keeping the injector open longer, delivering a larger volume of fuel.

Exhibit C and D (factory pulse width VS piggback enriched signal):

----[ ]---- ----[ ]-

For leaning out parts of the map the idea is the same, but since there is no way to know when the injector pulse end from the factory ECU, the piggyback controller instead shaves off the leading edge of the pulse by a predetermined millisecond amount.

Exhibit E and F (factory pulse width VS piggback lean signal):

----[ ]---- ------[ ]----

Good Practices

I have spent what seems now like over a hundred hours tuning the fueling my 1290 Superduke across two different engines, and while this is common knowledge to a lot of tuners, I want to save some of you time and expensive troubleshooting. There are a couple of main areas to pay attention to:

The Baseline

Make sure the bike is in good running order, the following factors will all affect your AFR (air fuel ratios) 1. Clean air filter - no brainer 2. Clean fuel filter - most pumps are easy to get to 3. Well running fuel pump - needs to build correct PSI and maintain it 4. Cleaned, flowed and balanced injectors - at about $18 a pop plus shipping from InjectorRX, it is cheap and effective insurance 5. Freshly adjusted valves - shoot for looser end of OE range as valves will tighten with time 6. Good grounding points - especially on piggyback, factory O2 sensor resistors 7. Check for intake vacuum leaks - inspect rubber throttle body mounts, especially. You are looking for leaks after the TB and before the combustion chamber (unmetered air) 8. Check for secondary air leaks - make sure no oxygen is entering or exhaust gases leaving between the chamber and the O2 wideband

The Process

Measuring and adjusting the fueling with a wideband is not too difficult, but requires patience and diligence. 1. Make sure the ambient air conditions are similar, ideally same. This includes moisture, pressure (or elevation) and temperature. Any factor that affects the oxygen density per unit volume matters. In the Bay Area this will rarely be an actual problem. 2. The dimensions you're working with are RPM range and load range (or a close approximation, like throttle opening percentage). To get a good map, you will want to cover this wide range from start to finish, but stop short of lugging the engine at low RPM, not all cells of the map are ever going to (or should) be visited by the factory ECU. 3. The wideband sensor should defer logging data until it's warmed up automatically. 4. The best way to get good data is to change the load and RPM very slowly, so system latencies have minimum effect and conditions like over-run do not have time to happen. Similarly, avoid traction control, wheelie control, quickshifter, rev-limiter and such from engaging. All of these will alter injector pulse or cut spark and that will affect your readings. 5. Your rear brake is a way to create load without breaking any Mexican speed limits, if you do not have access to a dyno. Check to ensure you have fresh rear pads, you will be surprised how fast those disappear when there's consstently a lot of heat in them, especially with something like my bike that develops 100 ft-lbs of torque. 6. Combined with the previous 2 points, this follows: the best way to get good clean data is on the dyno, in my experience. Second best is on the highway somewhere in Mexico, third best is on the track or on the street.

The Adjustment

If you're not using Power Commander realtime autotune, or if you're working with a real tuner, you will need to do the aiming yourself. 1. Develop an idea of target AFRs. To keep things straightforward you may want to pick one value for the entire map. As you experiment with that value, you will likely want to change it progressively from low-load to high-load. For shitty motors or weird cases, you will find area in the low or high RPM range where you will want to adjust it further. Different fuels will have different air requirements, the following assumes premium pump gas. ICE develop their best power somewhere in the range of 12-13.7, however, you will find that throttle response can be wildly different within it. As can be longtail reliability. Richer end (12 units of air per unit of liquid fuel) tends to work well for stressed or endurance engines, think sustained load during racing, forced induction engines, air cooled engines - it will make the combustion cooler. Also it happens to provide the smoothest, even if at times delayed throttle response. The leaner end of things (13.7 AFR) will give you snappier and jerkier throttle response and will make the combustion chamber and exhaust gases a bit hotter.

In my particular case, I use a 1-dimensional gradient across the load axis on my 2015 Superduke R 1301cc engine. I start at 13.4 AFR all the way at the bottom of 0-4% opening and use that AFR all the way until 50% load. From 50% load to 100% load I enrich it progressively from 13.4 AFR to 12.8 AFR. This suits my reliability and throttle response preferences. 2. Your software will want to tell you what you should adjust the fuel map to (automatically) to hit the desired AFR. I do not have good luck with this guesses process because for some reason for me it always ends up being an over-correction oscillation dance that would eventually converge. What I do instead is approach the desired AFR in steps. So if the software math is saying to enrich by 10 points, I will generally enrich by 5 points, then go out and measure again. 3. Discard any obvious outliers. No good fuel map and engine will have sudden jumps in fueling requirements. If you see dramatically lean values (sudden jumps from 13 AFR to 14 and lower), the engine may have cut spark, cut fuel or you hit an over-run condition. Do not touch the affected cells, go out and re-measure again. 4. In my case, Bazzaz does not collect data for the lowest tier of throttle load (0-4% range), the bottom most row. For extra exhaust pops, extra smooth on\off throttle transitions and reduced engine braking, I like to manually enrich this row to half of what the next row up is, numerically speaking. 5. The general wisdom is: if something looks weird, ignore the data and re-measure. When it doubts, make adjustments small, not larger. When on the fence, especially in high load parts of the map, go a little bit richer - it's safer for throttle inputs and for engine longevity. 6. With time you will start developing good intuition: you will notice the engine sounds differently when it's too rich, you will notice how twitchy the throttle is during lean condition.

The Debrief

Write down what you did and how you did it. Something will happen to your bike and you will want to know what our baseline represents. This can be injectors clogging, you experimenting with different plugs, you upgrading intake or exhaust or simply doing your valves. 1. Wideband oxygen sensors have limited life. Take the unit off your bike including supporting logging module and wiring harness. Save it for later. 2. Create a folder structure for that day's tuning resulting map. Note the target AFRs, note the atmospheric conditions, not the mileage and what your valves were set to. 3. If you have previous maps, do a map delta comparison to ensure the adjustments make sense. You can spot deteriorating valve clearances, dirty air filter, fouled plugs, bad injector spray pattern or a faulty oxygen sensor early this way.

Bonus Round

If you use Bazzaz and you get into this, you will likely burn up their oxygen sensor over the long run. Do not rush to give them $150 plus S\H for a new one. Their systems are based on industry standard Bosch 4.2 (closed air cell system) and Bosch 4.9 (new gen) wideband tuning technology. Standard off the shelf sensors will work, but ensure to match the connector.

In my case, I use the 4.2 system and I verified that Bosch 17018, is in fact, correct. At the time of me writing this it was $67 on Amazon and was Original Equipment part for some Subarus. Bazzaz themselves order these oxygen sensors in bulk from a third party supplier that does not stamp or mark them, making that whole hunt a huge pain in the ass for me, but I confirmed my findings with a Bazzaz tech. So save your valuable time and money.

Incomplete list of sources:

AutoSpeed - Tuning Air/Fuel Ratios http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&title=Tuning-AirFuel-Ratios&A=1595

Master Engine Tuner - Air-Fuel Ratio Tuning Tips http://www.masterenginetuner.com/air-fuel-ratio-tuning-tips.html

Amazon - Bosch 17018 4.2 LSU https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BZL0LC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

KTM 1290 SMR - My dope bike if you haven't seen it https://www.1290smr.com/

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Bazzaz Perpetual Lean Chase Tuning Condition

Just got done figuring out what was causing my KTM 1290 to be perpetually showing up as lean with the Bazzaz ZFi TC + AFR module.

My target AFR is set to 13.2 and it seems after every single ride my controller thought the mixture needed enrichment. Felt much like a lean condition that would result from a vacuum leak and bike was not running well.

I noticed while reverting to stock fuel maps that the bike ran better and that was a clue that Bazzaz was taking things in a bad direction.

My condition was extreme and was primarily caused by having erroneously recalibrated the TPS sensor within Bazzaz Z-Mapper with the bike just sitting there with the key in the ignition. This registered an open voltage of only 1.11v, which is wrong as the bike's ECU will not open the valves fully unless the engine is running and under load.

Most if not all modern ride-by-wire engine management systems have this condition and the recommended course of action is to leave the pre-programmed value within the Z-Mapper untouched (reference values at the bottom of the psot). Unless you have access to a dyno, which would be the most accurate way.

This, along with the closed value recalibration finally solved my fueling.

2014-15 KTM Superduke 1290R TPS voltage settings straight from Bazzaz themselves: - closed: 0.47v (0.51v on my bike) - open: 3.61v (using this value, TBD on my bike)

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Hide Facebook Friend Count

This particular friend metric thing has been bothering me for a while. If you're like me, follow the step below to remedy the situation in a matter of minutes.

Get Stylebot: https://chrome.google.com/…/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoh…

Open Facebook in a new tab

Click the 'css' extension logo in the top right of your browser, then select Open Stylebot

In the sidebar that appears, click 'edit css' button all the way at the bottom, add in the rule below and hit 'save'

a[href$='friends'] { color: #ffffff; }

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KTM 1290 Tips, Errors, Gotchas

To keep with the theme of writing up summary posts about common KTM issues, here is a post on my 3rd KTM, my 2014 1290 SMR as we call it.

MTC Error

'MTC error' is a dashboard warning that is accompanied with various levels of drive-ability. Anything from reduced power to intermittent drive-ability down to complete power cut.

In KTM lingo, this means anything to do with EFI, which includes the ride-by-wire throttle bodies, ignition coils, injectors and sometimes even certain emissions-related components.

One of the most common causes of this error is mechanical interference with the throttle body linkage (located on the right side of the throttle bodies, under the airbox. Especially after servicing valves/plugs or installing aftermarket fueling systems like Power Commander or Bazzaz, it's very easy to route wiring in a way that can interfere. ADV riders sometimes get brush or peddles in there, arriving at the same error.

Another seeming cause of this is incorrect elimination of the air valve located on the right side of the frame behind the black triangular trim box (opposite of coolant overflow, which lives behind same shape cover on the left side of the frame). Simply putting a resistor to the valve actuation harness is not enough, the bike seems to like to have the actual valve in there.

Hub Play

Mine disintegrated rapidly almost causing me to get hurt. Based on KTM forum folklore, 2014s suffer from weak ball bearings that can fall apart spectacularly, which I can confirm from personal experience. The fix is to order a replacement hub assembly with all bearings and circlips from a 2015+. I found mine on eBay, but my failure was so severe that the inside bearing ring heat-welded itself to the axle, so I had to get that too.

Check for play by having the bike on the side-stand (NOT the factory rear axle-insert stand). Simply lean it over and grab the right wheel with both hands from the exhaust side and try to rock it side to side. Any play at all is immediate cause for concern.

SW Motech Cage

It's awesome, get it.

Here is a video of it saving my bike at 70MPH. I stood the bike and aside from a loose taillight, it was perfectly rideable and needed almost no work. Only very minor cosmetic touchup: https://youtu.be/fnl3F3BcJBg

Bazzaz Z-Fi TC

I use Bazzaz to tune my bike because I'm running around with a 1290 Super Adventure exhaust setup and a factory Super Duke silencer.

When installing this system, popping off and swapping injector connectors is a necessary step and it's easy to reverse injector polarity assidentally. Double check your work, especially if the bike sounds like it runs on a single cylinder or doesn't fire at all.

Tail Light Plastic Crack

The tail light on these bikes uses a weak plastic tunnel into which a torx-head screw mounts from inside of the pillion seat through a small rubber grommet. The obvious failure mode here is the said threaded plastic piece cracking and leaving you hanging.

A cool thing to do here instead of buying a new one is as follows: - grind off the plastic posts - source small bolts with textured heads - use vice-grips or pliers to hold onto the threaded side of the bolt and heat the head of it up with a flame, I used a propane torch - press the scorching bolt head into the plastic housing of the taillight where you had just ground the posts, allowing it to melt together - use additional epoxy to seal above and around the bolt head that is now fused with the plastic

Now you have a durable way to attach the OEM headlight through the OEM grommets using a washer and a bolt. I recommend blue thread-locker and gaffer tape from the top of the taillight into the pillion stoage compartment as insurance. Do not over-toque these nuts, the grommets should not be stressed.

Lean AFR Condition

Just got done battling a lean running condition where all logical arrows pointed to fuel delivery problems. Took out the pump, filters looked clean, all seemed well.

Be very careful routing the throttle body/injector fuel hose upon reassembly. The airbox has a special channel just for the fuel line in the rear left corner of it, if the fuel line is moved closer to the intake instead, it will end up getting pinched between the airbox and the throttle body metal frame, causing a fuel starve condition.

Symptoms included intermittent power cut, either at high loads or at high RPM, indicating the problem was related to fuel flow. The other clue was that no matter how much injector pulse compensation Bazzaz dialed in, it would hardly cause AFR values to move down. Increasing injecxtor pulse width yielding constant AFR is an obvious tell-tale sign that fuel pressure at injector is insufficient.

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KTM Hydraulic Clutches

This is meant to help folks experiencing problems with the hydraulic clutch systems on their KTMs. This is based on my personal experience with my 690 SMC, 990 SMR and 1290 "SMR" SDR, as well as correspondence with Oberon (top shelf aftermarket slave cylinder manufacturer), Magura (OE supplier/designer of master cylinders for KTM) and Accossato (an Italian company making race parts, in our case DOT brake fluid based master cylinders).

KTM frequently use Magura master cylinder units that require mineral fluids. Motorex 75 or Magura Blood and the likes. Recently, KTM has made choices to switch to traditional DOT4 brake fluid based clutch systems as seen on the 2015+ 690 LC4.

Using DOT brake fluid in a mineral oil system will cause the seal to swell and jam, specifically (in my case) the OE master cylinder primary seal

Similarly, using mineral oil in master cylinder units could eventually cause the main seal to blow-by. Accossato master cylinders consistently exhibit this behavior (two undependent units, both tested by me, one tested by Galfer, Accosato's distributor in the US). However, Brembo RCS clutch master seemed more resilient, but I didn't run it with mineral oil long enough to know for sure.

If you're running the OE system designed for mineral oil and need something in a pinch, the best thing you can do is run ATF in it.

If you upgrade the slave cylinder to an Oberon unit, the Viton seal on that unit are safe with both DOT4 brake fluid, as well as mineral oil.

Here is a note from Chris Phelps at Galfer USA (Accossato's distributor here) from my personal corresponce with him over email:

If you have an Oberon slave cylinder and an Accossato master I would recommend switching to DOT fluid. This particular slave cylinder uses Viton seals and can be used with either fluid. You will find seal life increases in both the master and slave with DOT fluid, and it comes out much cleaner when bled on a regular service interval.

Hope this helps.

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KTM 1290 Superduke R Tips

Just got done installing the Bazzaz ZFi TC onto my bike and learned some things, all of which I'm writing down here for posterity. Hopefully this helps the enxt owner, future me, or otherwise desparing Googling souls.

Bike cranks but down start.

A part of the installation procedure for this fueling unit requires swapping injector connectors. The previous owner must've swapped them a couple of times because the leads were reversed and the bike wouldn't fire up while cranking.

When looking at the factory harness connectors: hold it in front of you so the wire exits at the bottom, facing you is the plastic clip and the mating end is up. The left wire should be grey with a black stripe and the right one should be orange.

When connecting to the Bazzaz harness, the orange wire should always make a pink/white OR red wire. In other words, color to color, grey to grey.

MTC Error

MTC Error will flash and become quickly irritating if the throttle body linkage movement is at all obstructed in any way. Make sure to cleverly secure extra wiring or other parts out of the way of the metal linkage on the right side of the throttle body assembly.

Gear Indicator Blank

Also the neutral light doesn't work and the bike won't idle with the clutch out.

This can happen if the bike detects bad signal from the gear position indicator. The way this happened to me is I accidentally plugged in an O2 sensor eliminator into the sensor, the harness connectors are the same.

The bike freaks out and stays in this mode, presumably to protect the equipment. The fix is to take it to the dealer and ask to get the fault codes cleared. While you're at it, make sure to ask for the latest KTM firmware.

CEL Blinks 1x Long 3x Short

Nothing to worry about with this one, this is a code for the airbox temp sensor value being out of range. Simply ignore this while working on the bike and it will be gone when the sensor is plugged in.

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KTM 990 ProTips, Part 2

See Part 1

Common Failures

My '11 SMR just hit 13.7K and there are already apparent trouble spots. Let's just say I could pretty much see all of these coming having owned the '08 690 SMC, I guess not too much changed in basic design vectors and suppliers for KTM in those 3 years.

Spark plugs: The manual states to change them every 10K miles. They mean it. I took mine out at 13K and they looked pretty damn spent. The plug you want to order is 2x LKAR8BI9.

Clutch master: People will tell you the clutch slave cylinder design is flawed and to expect it to fail by around 8K miles. Hasn't happened to me yet, but the master failed at 13.5K just like the one on 690 did. KTM Twins/Scuderia West sells the rebuild kits for $45, simple fix.

Oil lines: These dry sump designs are pretty great, except that it's annoying to change oil. And one more thing. If you research early 990 SMR pictures you will see black oil lines. If you look up the '11 990 SMR, you will see KTM added metal weave sleeve over the rubber. There is a reason for this: the lines rub when the motor vibrates. Unfortunately even the metal sleeves won't help 100%. Mine are already showing wear. There are many ways to protect them, but the best is to wrap the line that touches the oil filter cover with heat-resistant rubber. Get creative.

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KTM 990 SMR Oil Leak Fix

I have a 2011 KTM 990 SMR and at around 11K miles it developer a very small oil leak. Oil would collect near the kickstand on the underside of the transmission housing and drip onto the exhaust burning up in the process.

Very easy to spot:

After riding the bike, leave it be and check the top of the 180 bend on the exhaust for oil

Or start the bike and let it idle, does it smell like burning oil?

Begin by putting the bike onto a read stand and take off the kickstand (2 star bolts and one 13mm nut). After that I removed the gear selector lever by using an 9mm socket on a skinny extension.

Before you do the above step, measure the position of the gear selector to prevent future surprises. Mis-shifts at speed are dangerous!

Then you will see two allen bolts holding a circular electrical sensor that is grounded to one of the bolts. Take the bolts out and pull the sensor off. See below for what that looks like.

The sensor is the gear position sensor and the leak is due to the 27mm rubber seal deterorating. The KTM part number is 0770275025 and it can be had for around $1.99 at any KTM dealer.

The entire process doesn't take long, but for best results either do this while changing oil, or have the seal ready beforehand as the oil will weep as seen in the picture above.

Good luck

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KTM 990 ProTips

Part 2 available here.

It's been 5000 miles on my new bike after the 690 got totaled by a driver failing to yield. The particular bike I own is the 2011 KTM 990 SMR, but most of this will apply to all fuel-injected LC8 based bikes.

I've had many chances to shit my pants on this new bike and the following is an 'essentials' list for new owners, akin to the 690 SMC post I published a while back.

Sliders

Absolutely no reason not to be protecting these pretty bikes in the case of a crash. I've already have two of those and I can confirm that these crash very well, much like the other KTM supermoto I owned.

Some key equipment that saved my bike twice:

A tank protector crash cage 62012068000 -

Front axle sliders fp0033bk -

KTM Original Factory Handguards White 603021790028 -

Passenger peg sliders 61303946044 -

Tires

The previous owner had put Michelin Road Pilot 3 tires on this bike, and while the tire life was pretty good, it made this powerful bike absolutely terrifying at the limit.

With the power of factory Brembos and the mental throttle twitchiness, you owe it to yourself to be riding on actual sport tire.

Dunlop Sportmax Q3 turned my world upside down and I can corner again.

Throttle

Speaking of throttle twitchiness. Almost every fuel injected LC8 KTM owner will tell you the same thing. You have to address this issue. There is no downside, it's simply a detail that must be addressed by the owner.

Quite frankly, I am really surprised KTM have been putting these bikes out in this form from the factory, but the small throttle openings make this bike buck like a Bronco.

Some people prefer to put in G2Ergo throttle-tubes in, others put in KTM's own progressive 5209 throttle-tube, but none of that is necessary. You can make your own modification to the existing throttle tube in a matter of minutes.

This, coupled with MotoHooligan's LC8 Lean Secondry Butterfly Valves make the bike confidence inspiring in corners and very smooth.

Due to the added air/fueling control finesse, the bike cruises better on highway at lower RPM, sends less vibrations through to the handlebars and offers fantastic power control in corners. A true MUST!

Happy trolling!

Part 2 available here.

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Cute little vertical garden beginnings.

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'Mary' by DZarov.

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Backing it in!

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KTM 990 getting Dunlop Q3s mounted

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Acer S7-391 and Ubuntu 12

I think this is a pretty swell laptop and I tend to use Ubuntu to get real work done, so this presents a challenge. Why?

Because the S7 comes with UEFI by default and two SSDs in RAID0. Yes, two Intel SSDs that are striped. This is one of the main reasons I like the laptop, the IO is hella quick. How quick? I will update this post with a quick benchmark graph so you don't have to take my word for it.

The way things stand right now you have one of two ways out:

I <3 UEFI

Is this is the case, follow one of many sets of instructions on ubuntuforums.org to get it working, some of the most important steps are:

Grab 12.10 Desktop Edition (64 bit), comes w/ UEFI codez

Select Legacy BIOS instead of UEFI

Hit Ctrl-I while booting and disable RAID

Select UEFI instead of Legacy BIOS

...

Profit

I used mine in this configuration for a while and it worked well.

I <3 RAID-0 Moar

Now that I experimented with 13.04, which in turn completely fucked my brightness keyboard controls, I need to re-install Ubuntu again and this time I decided I'd let it configure the two SSDs for striping:

Grab 12.04 Alternative Edition (64 bit), comes w/ RAID codez

Select Legacy BIOS instead of UEFI

Install Ubuntu, selecting YES when asked about activating RAID drivers

Profit

Enjoy!

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xrom drivers link seems to be dead, any chance of a re-up? also how is your x-rom battery holding up?

Just re-uploaded. Enjoy. Battery seems to have held up perfectly after years of GBA neglect.

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Damn NorCal, you pretty.