Lucky Phil

The original spacers are notorious for being too short and killing bearings before their time. Will do, first day and first gelato done. Phil

You can acquire an old windows laptop for exactly nothing these days. Thats what I would do

That wire is only the solenoid wire it doesn't carry starter current so the size is fine. Phil

That shouldn't happen if the wheel spacer is the correct length. You should be able to crank up the axle nut even over tight and it shouldn't affect the wheel bearing lateral clearance. You should check the spacer length as it's too short. The bearing clearance is independent of the axle nut torque. That is the precise purpose of the bearing spacer. Greetings from Roma

I don't have an image docc and the new throttle bodies on the Daytona engine don't suffer the issue. I considered bending the bracket as well but in the end I used some .028 lockwire in one wrap around the cable end Ferrell and wired back to the inboard side of the bracket. It served to pull the cable ferrell flange hard against the bracket face and keep it aligned. It also helped a tiny bit with throttle cable play as previously the ferrell flange would kick away at an angle to the bracket at zero throttle and then get pulled into alignment as you opened the throttle. If you look at yours when you open the throttle the ferrell probably gets pulled straight when you load the cable and all the wear occurs when the throttle is closed at idle or on the overrun. Thats the way it was with mine anyway. Phil

Not sure. My bike with the old engine did it with a new timing sensor, old sensor, new and older plugs and even with the timing chain replaced by gears which dispelled the theory it was timing chain slack/tensioner. Phil

A MAP torch doesn't usually have a fine enough tip for heating the bridge screws and you need to use great care as you can easily melt the alloy bridge very thing section around the retaining screw. The yamaha seals a re also very cheap and what I used. The p/n is in the thread I'm sure. Phil

Yea I've not seen that before either docc. Phil

The throttle sleeve angle is an old issue docc. I have lockwire around the sleeve and tied to the bracket to pull the outer sheath into alignment with the bracket so the cable has a straight shot at the cam. Sounds like you have got the other damage sorted though. No need for a new cable. Even flight control cables are allowed some broken wires. Phil

I've mentioned before the ignition timing step on the std map at the low throttle angles of 4.2 and 5.1 degrees at the problematical rpm. Standard map is and 18degree ignition advance between 2200 and 2700 rpm at 4.2 degrees. Meinolfs map has cut this to around 7 degrees in the same general area although he's changed the rpm break points a little so a perfect comparison isn't available. He's also pulled some timing out at the same rpm range at 5.2 throttle angle as well so if this has reduced the issue then if it was me I'd pull a bit more out at the same ranges and see if that cures it. You can't get tuning right 100% on lambda readings alone, feel and lots of miles in varying riding conditions comes into it as well. My old engine would cough at times and then you couldn't make it if you tried. Maybe the issue is just a mechanical design issue at the end of the day if it can't be tuned out. The v11 engine may just have a small area of combustion instability under certain conditions due to the combustion chamber and piston crown design. Not sure, but if the Meinolf map has improved the issue noticeably I'd try pulling some more advance out of it at those rpm and throttle break points and see if it goes away. If not then put it back in again. Nothing to lose. Phil

Significant changes there in every area. Phil

They forgot the final line in the add. "The bold way to make time" in the workshop up to your arse in oil and broken engine parts"

You need to refine or examine the engineering term for "trellis" as a starting point but also I'll point out that the carbon bike did not connect the steering head to the cases but to the the cylinder heads and there in lies the difference. And it's a major difference. The classic Ducati trellis design uses the engine as a "stressed" member and eventually they evolved to a "semi stressed" member with the 916 because they added frame connections to the swingarm pivot. So the engine could be removed and the chassis rolled around like any bike sans engine. This was done to compensate for quadrupling the engine power over the original design engine and massively more mechanical grip through wider radial tyres and also because the early bikes like the 851/888 series had issues with crash damage caused to the rhs rear engine mount which could also crack even through riding on poor condition country roads such as we have here. With regards to your 750 race bike experience and engine cases and frame interactions I'm afraid your mechanic was wrong. I've supported/built 600 and 750 powered F2 and F1 factory Ducati race bikes at the IOM TT the toughest racing there was and is on road race machinery and also in domestic racing here as well as my 888 race bike and later 996 Ducatis in WSB spec at WSB races as well as domestic racing and I can say that none of them ever leaked at the case joints due to stress the rider put on them. Non of them ever leaked at a case joint period that I put together. Even in 996 form in the hands of former national champions and regular WSB riders who rode them hard they were always oil tight unless they had a failure. They suffered other consequences to racing stress but I've never seen one leak at the case joint because of it. I can't offer any more value to this conversation so I'll make this my final post. Phil

Not sure about the exact change over date but post 2001 I think. My images don't have the exact date ranges. I came across a couple of new manual taps in the spares locker the other day and got them on the bench for when I return from holidays. Now that I have a mill I can do the valve bobbin slotting modification with greater accuracy and appearance. Won't work any better than the current mod but will look more professional if someone ever has it apart. Phil

Sorry forgot to mention that. Phil

It's only applicable for the early bikes not the later ones that used the ignition switch to provide switching power to the start relay. The early bikes as shown the start relay always has direct switching power from fuse 4 but the later bikes it's switched through the ignition switch. Phil

He has battled CFS for quite a few yeas apparently. I used to follow him on Twitter but as usual with ex stars of anything that turns into a self promotional/endorsement freebee seeking thing so I don't bother anymore. Super talented rider but the assentation to Motogp used up all the emotion energy I think. The longest racing careers are usually the riders that have had the most support getting to the top, like Rossi, Hailwood, and a lot of the Spanish riders. As Kenny Roberts pointed out years ago racing uses up something inside you eventually. I think it's emotional energy and the less of it you consume on the road to the top the better your chances of staying there for a lot longer. People like Rossi and Hailwood never used any emotional energy sleeping in the back of a car at the track, worrying about finances or working on their own bikes or even riding a sub par bike. That sort of thing didn't drag the emotional reserves out of them over the long term. Nor did they have the pressure of families that had basically given up their lives and gone on the road to support their kids racing. That stuff takes a toll on you and shortens your career I think. Same as American riders have as a general statement found the GP scene harder I think. Being away from your home, family and culture for extended periods uses up some of that emotional energy.

You seem to forget Stoner finished 4th in 2009 by 86 points to Rossi and left 100 points on the table 75 of which were due to missing 3 races due to illness. On top of that his illness had hampered him for a few races before that with him being physically ill on the podium and even during races. So I don't think it's a stretch to say his shot at the title without missing 3 races due to illness and being affected for a few more would have been pretty strong if not almost unbeatable. All this on a bike with a brand new chassis from the ground up. I know a lot of manufacturers that would take 4 wins in the first season with not only brand new bike but with a ground breaking avant garde chassis design in the class. The carbon Ducati wasn't a trellis evolved design. The carbon bike was a Monocoque derivative and owes it's heritage to the Vincent and the Britten among others. The carbon Ducati frame concept was later adopted albeit in aluminium and magnesium form in the 1199 Panigale and the Suppaleggera.

I saw that test and that particular engine an old school design 2 valve pushrod made a whole 1.6% more average power. An engine that needs all the help it can get with regards to combustion chamber surface area V heat. Virtually all down to E85's slightly better cooling benefit. And that's squeezing the lemon to eek out every ounce of extra benefit with AFR and ignition. Overall the E85 in an old design engine with pretty low comp is a backward step when you consider the afore mentioned much worse fuel economy, hydroscopic nature which is hard on the whole fuel system and murder on the fuel tank. So not worth it on a V11 specifically and not anything else I can think of in reality unless you're boosted or willing to bump the comp to take advantage of the extra knock resistance. At the end of the day we all know pretty much that these fuels were and are more about propping up US corn growing industry than anything else. You'd make far more gains with a cheap and simple water meth injection kit and bypass all the Ethanol issues. Phil

Because you don't ride it even remotely close enough to the frames dynamic limits to tell. Thats the province of the elite riders and their massively refined sense of feel for the bike. It's not the frame is unpredictable it's that there was too much variation in the characteristics between one frame and another. So jumping from your #1 bike to your #2 bike would require too much adjustment for the rider and also meant that the settings on one wouldn't necessarily work as well or at all on the other. It's important the rider can swap from the #1 and #2 bike during practice and apply a change on one that will also work on the other by and large instead of having to adjust each bike individually to get the best out of it. There will always be a slight preference by the rider one over the other before the race but it shouldn't be too significant in his mind. You also want as close to total replication when the frame is replaced after the rider inevitively wads one from time to time. Ideally you should be able to assemble a whole bike out of spares and use the same settings as the previous bike and it will be 99% identical to the previous one in feel. For superbikes the bike is such a flexiflyer compared to a Motogp bike the rider just needs to and is used to adapting and any difference in frame flex characteristics is somewhat masked by the production nature of the whole bike and suspension anyway.

Very retro and quaint. Those are the sort of pegs I used to make 30 years ago and felt they were very cool. Then CNC machining arrived and it all changed. No longer could we spend a several hours at the lathe, mill, bandsaw and linisher and come up with "cool" and special, the world moved on. Here's a set of pegs from my 1198 that are about 14 years old. This is how fast it all changed in around 8 years. These cost far less than the bespoke ones we made manually back in the late 90's and early 2000's as well. I wish someone would make this level of beauty these days for the V11. It takes CNC. I could spend the rest of my life at the mill and never be able to achieve this.

You download the map with the Guzzidiag "reader" and save the map to your computer. The first time you read the original map takes about 10 minutes and doesn't actually remove the map just reads and then you save the copy to your computer. You then download off the web The Tunerpro software and then take your original ecu map you copied and saved to your computer known as a .bin file and upload it onto Tunerpro. Tunerpro is a programme that makes the .bin file you downloaded with the "reader" programme human readable and also allows you to modify the maps. Once you have taken your original map copy and adjusted it you can save it to your computer using a different name and also make notes on what was changed and then use the Guzzidia "writer" programme to install the modified map. It sounds complex but in practice it's very easy. i'm a computer muppet and even I find it easy after the first time. After that you can change maps in literally under 1 minute with a laptop sitting next to the bike. Here's what a map looks like in Tunerpro. In this case the ignition map and a main fuel map. You can change anything you see here, save it and upload to the bike with the "writer" programme.

Yep same logic we use investigating an air crash. Just bits of busted aeroplane nothing to see here

Well Stoner had a total of 7 wins and another 10 podiums on the carbon bike and finished 4th in the championship in it's first year including missing 3 rounds due to illness and a DNS at the last round when he crashed on the warmup lap. Looks like a promising start to a brand new concept to me. The advantage of the carbon construction is it's also a lot cheaper to make a carbon frame than an aluminium one and much easier to tailor to specific needs. The aero and the ride height devices need to go entirely and to put more of the emphasis back on the rider and less on the tech and the tyres. If you are going to spend big money on anything in racing make it the electronics that can be easily and quickly translated onto road bike products to not only benefit them but spread the development costs onto things that bring an income. Motogp worry about rising costs which is a bit laughable when you consider what they spend on hospitality and pointless things like custom painted headsets and helmets for crew etc. When "the show" becomes more important than the actual racing then you're on a downward slope. Take it back to basics a bit so the elite wannabees don't turn it into F1. Sometimes simple is better and new entrants can be a lot closer to the front right from the start.

Let me know if you ever want to sell the aftermarket exhaust. Phil