Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > More Crap & Nonsense today

[clint]

Bring back the supermono.

[/quote]Well said 888heaven................

[quote]
is the club not going to be interested in owners that have the passion but not the kudos off loads of money

[Mark]

Originally posted by 888heaven
Am I missing something here chaps did'nt ducati make loads of small affordable bikes(350 F1 250 Singles 400 SS etc)
And as for being elitist the reason i joined DSC was everyone seemed more interested in the bikes than how many cars/buisnesess/airlines they owned.
after reading Vmans threads perhaps i'm wrong.
is the club not going to be interested in owners that have the passion but not the kudos off loads of money""""
i feel a kebab coming on

Very much the minority mate. Why i joined the club myself. As mentioned before, it's all about owning a bike with a soul, of which owners are enthusiasts. On the whole, the few i've met are a good laugh and willing to help out. Webby, Antonye, Desmondo and Nick H (2 name a few)have helped me with various things, from Dukes through to web sites and home networks.

Someone being controversial and opinionated does not mean the rest of us are. Nor infact that person is wrong. After all we are individuals and entitled to our own opinions. Take an example of the whole club, not a individual. Owners of Dukes range from the wealthy to working class. I hand on heart don't think anyone here would look down on anybody because of their social standing. The impression i get, that is not the ethos here.

[antonye]

Don't forget there's already a Monster 400 - it's just that we don't get it in this country as an official import.

Ducati would do well to bring it here as a "learner" bike, and re-use the engine as an SS-alike and maybe even a motard?

Here's hoping...

[888heaven]

was that affordable then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ps
stopped buying MCN when they started putting pictures of ****s reading MCN on the moon el sunday sport,that and saying how wonderfull Hodgson is anybody got more than 20 pages into his auto without reading about caaaatherine""""and how wonderfull i am.
Hodgson GPs phah.

Steve,

That's a typical koppite remark.............

.........next you'll be remarking on the types of supporter that Everton attracts V Liverpool

I love my 999R

Coming to Box Hill on Sunday??? I'm gonna wear my Big Dunc fighting shirt..........he has no Freunds you know..

[Edited on 7-4-2004 by everton]

[AK]

Wish we had been able to get my daughter a 400 Ducati sports bike - as it was/is - she has to make do with a Hon*a.
Also wish the sportsbikes could be safely shortened in height for us short legged type peeps who really want one, can afford one - but cant flipping reach one!

C

[888heaven]

I Know where your coming from Flanker,I only went to one DOC meet and all the talked about was how they flew to every SBK Round and the latest TVR in the garage the £100,000 worth of shares they traded etc
I'm not ashamed to say im not in this leage and never will be,i spend every spare penny on the bikes.
I've was brought up on jap bikes but they just dont compare with the feeling of shutting the throttle in a tunnel with tergis ohhhh that throb and sound"""
scuse me ill be back from the tiolet in a min""

[Jools]

It's only Clint that mentioned it here, but I would love to see Ducati making a smaller lighter bike along the lines of the proposed Aprilia 450 twin, and I said it before in the thread about the 'prilia, that they already have the answer.

The Supermono.

Just think...a single barrel, head and injector set up from a testastretta bolted on to lighter, redesigned crankcases and you could end up with a 375cc machine with about 55Bhp or a 500cc machine with about 70Bhp, depending on whether you based it on 749 or 999 bits (and taking a crude approximation on power by halving the power output of a good 749s or 999s).

The NCR 100-One used an aircooled 1000DS engine tuned up to about 100Bhp and Titanium everything to get the weight down to 100Kg. In road going form the weight of that thing would probably go up to around 130Kg. By losing the weight of half the engine, and using 250 sized frame dimensions a Ducati 500cc single could surely get down to around 130-140Kg without needing titanium trickery?

Having all that space left by losing a barrel would mean you could get a decent sized airbox in without problems, and moving the barrel to a more traditional angle somewhere between the horizontal and vertical barrels would mean that you could move the engine forward without front wheel clearance problems and get a relatively long swingarm into a short wheelbase bike, with lighter weight as well the handling would be potentially fabulous.

What a bike! Might not be the ultimate trackday tool for fast circuits but it would be a giant killer on tighter circuits and on real roads.

If you could then make the styling drop dead gorgeous like the Supermono...and then ther is something so evocative about a 500cc single...BSA goldstars...jumpers for goalposts...

I would be first in the queue

[Shazaam!]

Regarding the Supermono:

From an interview last year with Ducati President Federico Minoli:


Question:

"Why won't you make the Supermono with lights, for the street? Especially as you can add value, and performance, by fitting a supercharger which has been proven to work effectively on single-cylinder motorcycles, represents an avant garde form of proven technology that on two wheels would be unique to Ducati, and would allow you to position the model advantageously pricewise."

Answer:

"From my point of view, this is a matter of priorities. We are a small company, so we have to choose what's most important. Do we develop a single? Do we make a four? Do we produce a three-valve air-cooled twin? Or how about a triple? I don't think we can afford to bring too many kinds of engines through to production, because although you're correct when you say that we've done all the hard work in actually designing a prototype Supermono, from there to actually rolling the first engine off the production line will cost us approximately five million Euros. Can we really expect to turn that much profit from such a product? That's what we have to ask ourselves. I'm not going to take this company down the road of over-investing as compared to the size that we have, and the profit we want to generate. So - sorry!"