All money, no sense: Rate your modifications
 

As suggested by Skidlids I thought I'd post my modifications and their related benefits 'in my opinion' to road riding, don't get to do track work:(. Feel free to continue the thread as I've found others are always intrested when the itchy fingers of the mod gremlin gets hold of them and they need their questions answering.

Cue Mod gremlin :devil:


Step one: Purchase new Ducati, regardless of model anyone will do. 748sps for me please. £6195

Step two: First ride get hooked, consider a new life as a bank robber to finance upgrades mmm.

Step three: If it didn't have some already, lust after aftermarket cans or a system to free the beast within :devil: there he is again ! ITG undertank filter £50 bye bye intake mesh. there is divided opinion on filters but ITG's works for me and last a long time.

I purchased a 54mm ex race full system by leo vinci. shopped around and got it at £500 excellent build quality and not offensively loud but gets the hairs up near the top end.
This is where the problems started because as most of you are aware a 748 doesn't have a 54mm system as standard. It runs a 45/50 crossover which is rather nice in open termi mode.
All this talk of exhausts coincided with a non fault off which was mostly cosmetic apart from a big dent in the front wheel from hitting a curb, mmm expensive.
Make quick excuse for fitting 54mm system, off to AJ racing for an 853 kit.

Again shop around Alan is very competitive though roughly £1100 for the pleasure minus labour.

While we're at it pop on a 14t front renthal, we should all do this or 15t on a 996, some don't like it. I'm going back to a 15/37 now the powers gone up, more of that later.

Lightend flywheel for quicker revs and believe me they're quick but opinion is divided on whether it gives you more or less engine braking, mine feels like it gives less. more scary corner speed.

Power commander £240 odd for perfect fueling with dyno set up. I had a FIM chip £120 upwards,when the bike was a 748 and that was flawless but fancied a change.

Happened upon some black split spoke light wight forged OZ wheels on Ebay for £700 full retail is £1000. yes please
:devil::devil: direct fitment with all parts included. the difference in turn in and flickabilty can be felt by mere mortals and is quite shocking to start with well worth the money

While waiting for all this to take shape i purchased the QB desmosedici kit. Long story, looks good, fits bad, £600. Gilles rear sets £250 depending where you go which are a work of art and really quite good along with gilles adjustable clip ons £120 which can be raised and lowered in the horizontal plane and are also very trick

Back to Ebay purchase a corse slipper clutch for £490 ! nuff said. Can't resist an offer on ebay for a Radial brembo lever set clutch and brake:devil: £250. this is all done to feel and they really give it again well worth it.

Decided to match the levers at the other end purchased some P4 brembo 4 pad calipers, awesome!! wait until everyones going radial bonkers and then get yourself a cheap pair. the clutch got an stm reduced pressure unit like the tecmoto ones but somehow tricker ? works just as good. £140

My bike is now in at Tecmoto having the heads gasflowed, to fully unleash the engines potential, that's what I tell myself anyway. Icindentally I will have dyno grapphs from 748sps 45/50mill through various chips to 853 and 54 mill sys to 853 with flowed heads that i'll be posting next week which should make intresting reading for those seeking engine mods.

In my opinion none of these mods were actually needed on the road apart from maybe the cans which I had already when I got the bike. However once you've done one you tend to do another but all of them really do improve the enjoyment factor and sense of pride of ownership. The bike now turns on an euro is as fast in a straight line as any 600 and faster through the corners 'if I could ride that fast' and just thoroughly addictive :D:devil::devil::devil:

thought my couple of bits of carbon, termi pipes and 40t rear were excessive:D

How is the 853 kit, and how do you rate AJ? Looking around at having this done, appreciate your thoughts.
paul

How about new rockers and camshaft?, thats definately all money, no sense. I should scrap it and buy an Aprilia:devil::devil::devil:

Nice post FB!!
 

......that's the bug alright!!

and it wont stop there FB, not until you sell her ... its a common infection amongst Duke owners...

Can't falt you mate, thats what life is about...

Enjoy what you have today cos you never know tomorrow...

Nice one FB, I was hoping my comments in the other post would prompt you in to doing something like this, mainly as I intend the new bike to feature a lot of mods you have done, trouble is mine will hopefully all be done in one hit over the winter so it will be a bit hard to evaluate them independently.

At the moment my 916BP road bike has 45mm Carbon Termis with Senna Open Chip, carbon airbox and a renthal sprocket carrier running one tooth larger rear sprocket.

Where as my 916 Strada race bike has a 54mm system with Arrow Ti cans, no air filters or gauze, Harris rearsets, alloy subframe with carbon seat, renthal rear carrier with usually a 38th sprocket fitted with the front one tooth less than normal, luckily the 748R slipper clutch helps out at the hairpins. Wheels I have a choice std 3 spokes for Wets, 5 spoke alloys for inters and 5 spoke mags for the main race rubber usually Rennsports, Discs are the fully floating SPS type helped by a Brembo radial mastercylinder. and it has just a Tacho and temp gauge on a alloy bracket.

The new bike at the moment has a 748RS frame fitted with a 998BP engine, forks are of the Nitrided Showa variaty and mounted in Mag yokes (but will be replaced with Ohlins forks in Harris adjustable yokes at some point). The rear is fitted with a Mag race arm (may get replaced with a Carbon one) along with a race spec ohlins and works spec rocker. Its going to use the Mag wheels from the race bike with Spondon discs and the 4 pad callipers again with a Brembo Radial Mastercylinder. Harris rearsets will again be used. the engine will be standard b apart from a FBF bearing type slipper clutch driving to a Renthal sprocket carrier. I hope to be able to adapt my 748RS 54mm Exhaust to fit in time, but may start with a 50mm system with Carbon Termis. No doubt there will be a few more mods to follow.

[Edited on 30-10-2003 by skidlids]

Skidlids,

I think your a bit rash butchering a 748RS exhaust system. Bear in mind it's a £3000 system. Why not sell it and buy one for a testastreta?

54mm 996R/998 Exhaust

Made by Sil Motor and from what I've heard, every bit as good, if not better than Termi and you could always replace the stickers with Termi ones.

Bit of a bargain at the moment and I'm sure you could sell the 748RS system for plenty dosh!

Just a thought . . .

Neil.

Thanks for the link Neil, not sure how much something like that would end up costing, with delivery and duties payable.
maybe I will have to modify on of my other 54mm systems, maybe the Arrow one as that already has a few mods to it andd put the RS one on the 955 motor.

Dyno charts before bore, and after.
 

No gasflow charts yet. Sorry if the images are a bit poo:P Bradders I cannot fault Alan. He's a pro likes his job and goes out of his way to make things as good as they get. Give him a call for a chat and a quote 01453845544. ;)

This was the base run on the 748FIM chip Alans chip made 105 an 56ft but was dire at the bottom end due to it being a race map. you can see where the sps cams kick in at 7ish rpm

Diiss won voz avter the engine voz a big bore
 

It was much better to ride than to talk too:lol: On the previous graph which was running the ITG filter and 45/50 open termis you can see the bike spike on the bottom end which was causing problems and we never really got rid of. this run is with the blue base line as the bore without the commander running on Alans 853 chip and the red line after the commander was mapped also from Alan, both with the 54mm system

You can see how the bottom end has cleaned up
 

with the commander mapped. I needed glasses to read it but it says 110.6 summit up from 105.4 without the PC2. the air fuel line is lurverlly. but the top end is crap:o. You expect the torque to go mad and it did, from 55 on the old 748 engine to a max of 65.5 but with a 54mm full system where are the rest of my ponies :ninja: Hence gasflow. All figures were measured at rear wheel. Enjoy:P

Crikey didn\'t expect this
 

Well the gasflows done ! The following graphs show the results. for those with glasses here's the low down. Bike now puting out 116.3bhp at the back wheel at 10'500 rpm but it actually does 116 from 10'000 and stays over 115 all the way to 12'000. From making 50bhp at just before 6000rpm the sps cams kick in a it fecks off to 110bhp by 8300rpm. But thats not the good bit:devil:

The torque is unbelievable. it's puting out a peak of 68.0ft at 8500rpm and over 60ft from 6 to 10'000rpm awesome.

Now for the crap bit. The bottom end fueling is somewhat suspect. without fail the bike will cut out while idling even when it's warm and sitting at traffic lights, :( oh dear or trailing the clutch at low revs. checked all the fuel lines and adjusted the idle speed, no luck. Hoping to get some dyno work today.

Am I pleased ? Yes, and broke £990 pounds please. It's the closest I'll ever get to a race bike that won't need rebuliding after a day out, i'm chuuffed and a little scared first time back on the banana in a month and a half and taking it easy, whoa there boy:lol:

graph two, torque
 

The blue lines are the gasflow before the commander was mapped, apart from the last one where HM racing kindly compared it to an 853r that makes 118.3peak hp but gets mullered by mine right through the range, nice:P

graph 3 gearing thingy
 

I'm now running a 36 tooth renthal and it's still trying to rip my arms off, had a 'trial run' yesterday and power stays solid until about 145mph then carries on but i didn't get that far:lol:

Job done
 

Slight hicup at 9000rpm, but you dont feel it. bye bye 853r. :roll:

Do you have locations and phone numbers for these tuners? There is nothing I can see in the links page.

Ta,

Rob

It's interesting that you got a dip in the horsepower curve at 9,500 rpm after you gas-flowed the heads. I suspect this is a resonance effect associated with the airbox volume. For example, the 748R comes with a larger (14 liter vs. 8 liter), two piece airbox. To accommodate the larger air box the 748R frame is also slightly different, so they're are not interchangeable with a standard bike.

You can test my theory by temporarily increasing the airbox volume, by lifting the fuel tank away from the lower section of the airbox on a future dyno run, or perhaps make one of your future dyno runs without the ITG filter (since it fills-up some of the airbox volume.)

As to the low rpm stalling problem, a too-smooth intake tract can limit the creation of air vortices that help in the mixing of the incoming air and fuel droplets. Unburned fuel that drops out of suspension acts as a damper on combustion. At higher rpms the intake air velocity is higher so it's less of a problem.

Keep in mind too, that intake air velocity and efficiency in filling the cylinder is also affected by the throttle body diameter. 748's use 48mm, 916 use 50mm, 996 dual injector use 51mm, and shower injector models use 54mm (with the 748R being restricted down to 48mm at the bottom of the manifold.) The early 748's came with 50mm throttle plates, but were restricted after the plates down to 44mm which is why a number of 853 big-bore owners have back-fitted 916 50mm throttle bodies.

Thanks shazzam .
 

YOU both have ooo 2 ooo :)

Mods, so far................
 

Well,

So far the bike has carbon termis + chip. A full monty service, 853 kit and a minor bit of head work from Sigma performance. :devil:

Much more to come.:roll: Oh yes!

Phew, back to the job of riding at last.
 

All gremlins now ironed out of the fuel map, which was causing idle speed cut outs and all manner of interesting low rpm cornering shenanigans. Took a trip back to HM racing in kent. Within ten minutes on the dyno using my existing map the idle fueling was adjusted and sorted. Took a trip back to Tecmoto at really short notice they managed to balance my throttle bodies and reset the CO balance both of which were way out of snyc. After upping the idle speed and changing my rear sprocket back to a 39t, the 36 was fun but stupid on the road; TIM the ace mechanic helped me move my adjustable rearsets and lower the ride height to suit the sprocket. I'm shocked how good the bike is now and will be going to great lengths to get other people to ride it so they can say so too :P First stop cornerspeed :devil: Be Afriad Neil, Be very Afraid :D

I look forward to it FB...........very much so :devil:
I've yet to get the first Cornerspeed kitted 855 on the Dyno. Hoping to be there in a couple of weeks.
Originally a BP vs. your SPS and a much simpler conversion, it will be interesting to compare graphs and bhp/£ ;)
I'm hoping to get my own bike started soon..............so beware
:P

Mmmm
 

Going for a Buzz monday let me know if you'll be about. :)

I'll be about FB. A few things to sort, but I won't be far away. Love to cya. ;)

kE DOKE
 

Probably early afternoon, keep your lid handy :D