Pyörä on valmis. Ensimmäinen kilpailu on ajettu!

23.6 järjestettiin Alastarolla vuoden 2007 toinen Yamaha-Center Cup-kilpailu. Osallistuin siihen Ducatilla. Startissa oli 35 pyörää, sijoituin ensin aika-ajoissa 22. sijalle. Startissa on parantamisen varaa, sillä menetin sijoituksia lähdössä. Sain kuitenkin nopeasti hyvän ajorytmin päälle ja lopuksi sain aikaan paremman tuloksen kuin odotinkaan - olin kilpailun 16. sijalla!

Installing trackday fairing

So, I have considered participating some club racing. The racing series is "Yamaha Center Cup" and despite the name you can participate with allmost all kind of bike.

YAMAHA CENTER CUP - Homepage

http://www.mp-tuki.fi/index.php?v=jm&s=jm&PHPSESSID=a7f443084b198556bcc75d519d39d0b9

Because of that I bought a set of racing fairings + nose cone with headlamp holes from Bikesplast in Checz Republic.

The quality is pretty good. There is allways some work when trying to install glassfiber fairings decently and with these fairings it looks like everything goes pretty well.

The rear fairing on the picture is some kind of "Desmosedici" tail and it was a litte hard to fit properly. Now it is there but there is still a little dent above - I had to add a Dzuz fastener to hold fairing properly on it's place... However this is a trackday fairing and in my opinion it should look like a tool too!

Dyno tuning

So, now I finally managed to have some time to update my blog. There has been some progress on my so called project, I had a chance to have some dyno time. We basically tested couple of ECU:s, first was original ecu and second was Ducati Performance ecu for slip-on silencer.

Modifications to my bike are these:

- Leovince racing slip-on

- Termignoni front exhaust pipe without catalytic converter

- Pipercross air filters

The result was pretty good: 112,6 horsepower at the rear wheel! The engine output is allmost 125 horsepower. The Leovinci exhaust works pretty well.

Exhaust gas analyzer was of course used and the bike was running a little bit rich - AFR (Air to Fuel Ratio) was 12:1 when optimal is about 14:1. However there is nothing to be done without Powercommander or similar so I will leave it like this. It is very good anyway.

The valves are adjusted!

Now the valve adjustment and belt change is finally done. There is still some work to do, for example STM cluch slave cylinder assembly and other minor things.

I have been thinking to conver my bike to a racer to compete in couple of races. Let's see how I can do... ;)

There is a racing series in Finland which is called "Yamaha Center Cup". Despite the name you can participate in allmost any bike.

This racing thing is yet just a tought... but you never know!

Some progress in garage!

So far so good.

I purchaced new rearsets from JTR Corse. Similar to these on the picture but completely black. Of course my rearsets are racing model with reverse shifting and short racing footrests. I also wanted to change the shift pattern to reverse because it feels better on track. My only consern now is how soon I will get used to push down the lever to shift to higher gear... I hope there won't be any missed shifts but you never know!

Quality to price is ok in these rearsets, but... There was a minor problem fitting these to 749 Biposto 2004 frame!!! These rearsets need D20,0 x D8,0 spacer with thickness of about 14 mm between rearsets and frame. Otherwise these won't fit!

Servicing and some nice bits

Last wednesday I had a chance to do some maintenance to my Duc again.






I completed valve clearance check and adjustment on vertical cylinder but Horizontal needs still some work. Allmost all clearances on both cylinders were allmost out of tolerance so I had to adjust clearances to nominal values. Of course I also changed all the half rings to new ones, I am not sure is it completely necessary but it doesn't cost much and it adds safety. I am riding much on a racetrack during summer so I have to be carefull...

As you can see I also have bought some nice new & shiny bits. This is a brand new pressure plate from German company MPL. Very precise machining and pretty good price to quality value. Very light also compared to original.

I also bought new front sprocet cover. It is much better looking than original - this is only for looks folks!

I also stripped the cluch completely and it still was ok. Of course it should be because the whole bike is only about 7000 km driven, but you never know how those dry cluches last...

Adding some special parts (part 1)

I purchased my first real Ducati in March 2004, I actually traded my 2003 CBR600F to my Ducati 749 Dark. But this wasn't beginning of my Ducati career, actually I have owned "allmost" a Ducati back in 1995 when I had a Cagiva C12R Freccia. After owning C12R I must admit I have been a true Ducati fan alltought I ownded 2 Yamahas, 1 Suzuki, 1 Kawasaki and a Honda before 749...



Afterall let's go back to my 749. The bike is very good to ride even on racetrack in standard form, there was actually only minor things I wanted to improve.



Rear sprocket

At first I replaced rear sprocket with Renthall product. Stock gearing is 14-39 with 525 chain. I replaced rear sprocket with aluminium 41-teeth sprocket and indeed there was huge improvement because now the gearing suited much better conditions on our local Alastaro racetrack. Also the bike felt better on street.



Steering Damper

I bought a Bitubo racing steering damper which was only for "normal" 749/999 frame. There is no bracket on "Dark" frame so and that time there was nothing else available than original Ducati performance steering damper kit available so I desided to design my own bracket and let a friend to manufacture it.



(I will ad some pics later on)



Adjustable ride height

749 Dark has only rigid bar instead of adjustable bar. So there is room for improvement. I bought a new adjustable bar from ebay and now this little improvement is reached. On the picture you can also see a custom made Bitubo FXF 11 Racing rear shock - an awesome piece of race engineering (more about that later)!