Ducati Sporting Club UK > Sport > Trackdays & Race Schools > Donington yesterday 22/11

[yeti]

Took a chance with the weather to give the new bike a shake down at Donington yesterday. Arrived at a sensible time, only to wait till the ice thawed on the circuit. Eventually around 1030 they finally let us loose with dire warnings of damp patches and ice in the lee of the auction building and the pit complex!

First impressions were sadly not good. The thing has a horrid flat spot/misfire that only really clears above 6500 rpm. Not good when you are trying to be ever so careful on the throttle, and a real b*****d exiting the Melbourne hairpin! Ran the first couple of sessions with the quickshifter switched off, simply to have one less complication. It’s pretty obvious that the fuelling is all over the place, yet I am assured that Marelli themselves sorted out the software and helped with the mapping when it was on the dyno.

After a couple of sessions, I could start to get the feel of the bike, and a definite dry/thawed line was developing so started to open it out a bit more and run it into the rev limiter at 10.5k The shifter was a revelation! Being able to keep the throttle pinned while simply tapping down on the lever was gaining me yards on bikes with conventional gear changes. It took a while to re-educate my right hand into not shutting off, and some of the initial changes were a bit hard, but a subtle change in lever and footpeg position sorted that out.

Another problem that did manifest itself was a tiny brake fluid leak that was leaving fluid inside the screen. Fairly certain it’s a combination of weeping bleed nipples on the calipers, and maybe a dodgy jubilee on the reservoir. So new bleed nipples and crimped connections are the order of the day.

Given that this bike hasn’t turned a wheel in anger for at least 6 years, I was pleasantly surprised how few problems we had during the day. Simon Reed very kindly came down to offer advice and an extra body, whilst Elaine kept us topped up with hot soup and coffee. Boy was it cold at times.

So it’s into the big shed for the winter and a bit of detective work to track down someone who can set her up properly. It runs a Marelli MAR600 ECU, so finding someone with the knowledge to set her up properly might be a problem. First line of questioning must surely be to Mr Hackett to see what he has to say about the matter.

Roll on next year……………