| Project 'Changeeveryfink' part 6 - Finished & success at Ducati Speciale Challenge.
It lives .... Project 'Changeeveryfink' part 6. Glory be - it's finished, road legal and very shiny (for now).
After the last update in October 05, it has been pretty slow going getting the bike back on the road. A combination of family stuff, too much working abroad (sounds glamorous but really is a pain in the ar$e) and any extended spells of good weather to fully test the bike. After nearly two years of fettling and decision making, it is now finished (for now). With all the bits in place, it has been running well, survived another track day, been to the seaside and seen the public roads a few times. Nothing has fallen off although adjustments have been made as we have gone along.
But all the hard work has paid off as I recently entered and won the UK Ducati Speciale Challenge. The bike was up against any other modified Ducatis so long as it had a Ducati engine and an original frame. It's really cool that I won - not only as it was the best Monster but also that it beat other Ducatis - some costing over nearly 2 to 3 times as much as my bike. So I get to go the Milan Motorcycle Show in November - cool.
Anyway, enough boasting and I'll bore you with the details of what's gone on with the bike since last October.
WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT?
NEW RADIATOR - WHY AND HOW?
This arrived in February but it really wasn't possible to road test it on the bike due to a combination of an aluminum construction and road salt not being particularly good partners - something to do with chemistry or physics or gravity - one of them? Anyway, didn't seem any point in rushing now that the finish line was in sight.
The reason for designing a new radiator was purely cosmetic - it sticks out too far and upsets the lines of the bike. I recently saw the new S4RS and I am convinced that that radiator is even larger!! Although the Monster design has evolved over the years, the radiator has been the most universally criticised part of the water cooled bikes. The radiator is bigger than my mother in laws mouth and it looks like it's from a Ford Cortina came the digs from the air cooled corner - ah, but better performance was always the comeback from water cooled corner. Being that the Monster's primary selling point has been looks first and performance second, the radiator was the ever present thorn in the side of the S4 / S4R / S4RS range of Monsters - so I decided to have a go at making it better. In my opinion, the MV Brutale has made the best job of integrating the radiator into the frame - but then again, that shouldn't really be a surprise as MV's have never exactly been under designed.
The initial plan was to design a three part radiator like the oversized race bikes - tapering into a V thus fitting nicely into the lines of the bike. This would consist of three cores - the main cores and two smaller cores underneath the main element either side of the spark plug. Ah, spark plug access - this little fecker is the only reason for the height of the radiator being as shallow as it is - at one point, we were even looking at a hinged design which meant that spark plug access would mean removal (or at least part removal) of the radiator. After a few designs, I settled on a basic replacement which wasn't going to cost the earth.
It was built by Pace Products who have extensive experience building stuff for Formula One cars etc so they seemed like the people for the job. It was just a matter of whether they would be interested in a project as small as this but full credit to them, they were the nicest bunch of people to deal with and really know their onions. With the help of Stewart (Capo from the UKMOC), we worked out that the existing radiator is over engineered and a bit overkill for a naked bike as it's the same dimensions as the 9X6 sports bikes. With the radiator not being enclosed by a fairing, we felt that we could reduce the capacity by a small amount without any detrimental effect on it's performance. Further discussions with Pace allowed us to use a thicker core which in turn allowed us to make the radiator much slimmer (60mm in total) - which was the main intention.
With it mounted on the bike, I did the UKMOC Trackday at Mallory Park and I am glad to report that it performed faultlessly. How well, you may well ask? Well, it didn't break, overheat, fall off and stayed sufficiently cool enough not to explode. In a very basic comparison test, the actual radiator temperature was actually lower than my friend's S4 which had just completed the same session. So, in a purely non scientific way, I would say that even though I now have a smaller, better looking radiator – it is also more efficient.
FIM SET-UP
In theory the FIM chip should have just been a plug-in and play. Well, it certainly plugged in but getting it to run correctly was a right Royal pain in the butt. Not for me but had poor old Dave tearing his hair out. We ordered the unit from Sigma Performance (the official UK importers) but it appears that they didn't really have the technical knowledge to get it running correctly. After several lengthy (and expensive) phone calls to Australia, FIM managed to set Dave on the right track. Not an ideal situation but again shows the dedication that has gone into getting this bike to run - and all this to change the dash.
REAR VIEW CAMERA
The problem with 'specials' is that it is a (seemingly) never ending chase to get things to fit. Previous experiences with Ducati 'bolt-ons' had taught me that 'bolting on' is not what they do. There is usually (always) some amount of filing, drilling or fabricating something to make the part fit but hey, it's Italian - it's called character. Anyway, with the clutch and brake masters being replaced by the equivalent race versions, there was no longer a mounting bracket for the mirrors. I managed to source some replacement Brembo clamps (from the US) with integral mirror mounts and that worked with the Brembo race masters ..... in theory. Yes, they did fit but due to the angle of the levers, it meant that the mirrors would have given me a good view of the sky (or the road) rather than the surrounding traffic.
So I tried it without mirrors which wasn't half as bad as I thought - I guess riding in London has taught me to never trust the mirrors anyway. The only time I missed them was on dual carriageways and motorways so I could see exactly who was behind me whether that be friends on rideouts or our friendly traffic Police ensuring that my indicators work correctly.
Despite the little experiment sans mirrors, I decided I wanted to live a little while longer so plumped for a single bar-end Rizoma bar-end mirror. Now, I've never liked the look of bar-ends as they make the widest point of the bike even wider still - certainly not recommended in Central London. Our cousins over the pond seem to favour them - perhaps due to their wider roads or simply down to culture differences. In my opinion, they belong on the original Cafe Racers and retro styled machines but this seemed to be the only option. While this looked pretty good (quite funky styling in keeping with the rest of the bike), the single bar end mirror had upset the whole symmetry of the bike. So, we had to think of something else......
that's when Dave suggested a rear-view camera with a dash mounted monitor. Dpn't be frikkin' stoopid Dave, that'll never work but feckit, what have we got to lose? So Dave ordered in the bits and we had a play with it connected to the computer. Well, feck me, the picture resolution and clarity were amazing. I had half expected it to look like CCTV footage where you struggle to even see the sex of the criminal, never mind what weapon he was holding. With experiment 1 over, the next job was to fit it all to the bike. The electrical stuff was relatively straight forward but the lack of space around the top yoke, meant that a few bits had to be moved about aswell as fabricating new steering brackets (for the third time).
So with it all on, how does it go? In a word - amazing. Like most people, I was sceptical for a number of reasons: picture quality, resolution, stability, viewing angle etc but the monitor is of high enough resolution to show enough of the road for it to be useful and trusted. Obviously, it'll not replace looking over my shoulders but it certainly does what we intended it to do. Now all we we have to do is to make it waterproof!
TRANSLOGIC DIGITAL DASH REPLACEMENT
Upon testing, a few flaws were found in the dash - not mechanical flaws but rather how it functions as a road item. It is primarily a race item so really gives you all you need to know on a race track but misses out a few little bits of information needed for a road bike. It doesn't show the time nor does it have warnings for low fuel, indicators or an independent trip meter (only the overall amount)..... so, after a few discussions with the manufacturer, it appears that they have improved the dash so that it has an additional two inputs (for fuel and indicators). One simple petrol light meant the paranoia of running out of petrol were now gone which meant that I didn't have to stop at every single petrol station that I passed. If I was being really picky (which I am), I would still like to see a single trip meter (it only shows the total miles) and a clock (hey, practicality rules). Maybe, I'll source a discrete digital item to fit into the panel .... maybe.
(continued)
Last edited by marchesini : 24-Sep-2006 at 00:03. |
23-Sep-2006, 23:51 
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