My lil' rear brake master cylinder mounting conundrum was frustrating....but not half as frustrating as realising I was actually looking at 2 problems in 1, like one of those bunky 3D images where if you stare at it long enough through squinted eyes, and your tongue held just the right way, another image appears.
Issue #1: the brake master bracket mounts direct to the crankcase, and the rear of the brake master if not touching the RS exhaust was a ciggie paper thickness away from doing so, but I could probably space it out. What I couldn't make disappear was the circled issue below:
If you look closely, the head of the rear-most (M10) bracket mounting allen bolt is female threaded, so the bolt itself becomes the fixing point for the master cylinder M6 mounting bolt threading into it. All well and good....until you also need that same crankcase mounting point for the exhaust anti-vibration mount. Like all threesomes, things just got awfully messy.
For reference, the RS/Corse bikes use a brake master mounted vertically on the rearset hanger, in an arrangement which also suspends the exhaust guard:
Issue #2: Oh shit! The exhaust guard! What am I supposed to hang it off...and what exactly do I hang?
I shudder to think about price/availability of the Corse rearsets as I've only ever seen a few bits and bobs come up, never a complete set, so I'm pretty sure any ambitions in that direction would definitely exceed my worth.
Liquid inspiration, don't fail me now (insert sound of footsteps trudging to the beer fridge)....
...and a couple of thought lubricating beverages later an idea started flickering in my scone like a fluorescent tube struggling to fire.
Ok, so as anybody with even a 57mm Termi, Leo Vince or Akrapovic exhaust (let alone RS 63.5mm) will tell you, the RH rearset needs to be spaced out to allow clearance. Here's what I prepared earlier, just as I'd done for the 749R:
My idea was to replace the 6mm spacers with a 6mm thick exhaust guard mount:
I don’t have a rotary table for my lil’ milling machine, and realistically it would take forever to set up even if I knew what I was doing, which I don't, so a jigsaw and elbow grease were as quick as anything else in knocking it out.
The “Migliore” rearsets are no accident, I have the same on the 749R. Simple, light, strong (7075 vs more usual 6061 - and personally crash tested, lol) they were made by a British engineering firm until a generational change in management (“father and son” became just “son”) had them taken off the engineering menu. Pity. No ugly/heavy multi-hole hanger plates, elegant eccentrics for positioning levers and toe pegs, bearings instead of bushes for a sweet action, and they’re smart/experienced enough to machine the pegs with a weak point half-way along, leaving at least half a peg should the worst happen.
I was really happy with them so It just made sense to go same-same, and a few spare parts I had would cover both bikes.
So I was stoked to find this well priced NOS set for the project, but I was a lil’ surprised to find one difference between the earlier and later sets: the later pegs are not knurled = hella slippery. Earlier vs later pegs:
No problem, it’s literally a 5 minute job to wack them in the lathe and knurl them up….
…or I could make my life hard and fit some DP (DPM) pegs I had stashed away, for a tougher, more “Corse” look….even if they aren’t. By now you know as well as I do that I'm never going to pass up an opportunity to kick myself in the shins, I mean why spend 5 minutes on something when you can spend hours:
The fly flapping around in my soup was that the DP pegs are M10 tapped, vs M8, and the bolts had to be countersunk to allow the eccentric clearance to swivel, and I had no M10 countersunk bolts…
….so I machined the DP pegs to suit the recess in the eccentrics (the rh item below), and machined some cylindrical head Ti bolts into countersunk head:
And, in the longest “5 minute job” known to man, we’re just about there:
Tangent alert! This following just tickles me and illustrates a couple of points, so I thought I'd share:
1. Why the Corse rearsets are Zucker-bux expensive
2. The level of detail Ducati Corse went to in the pursuit of winning
These are a couple of sets of Corse footpegs:
Now WSB rules stipulate the pegs must be fixed, so why are these clearly hinged? I mean you can even see the return spring. What gives?
You can also see a small hole below the pivot pin? The clever buggers fit a shear pin, so the pegs are fixed...right up until you crash, the pin shears and allows the pegs to pivot, remaining intact.
You have to admire the level of detail don't you? Unfortunately, clever thinking and beautiful engineering doesn't come cheap. But you can sorta see a vague resemblance to my DPM pegs....minus the clever thinking....and beautiful engineering.
Anyway, back on track: the rearset is sorted, exhaust guard hanger sorted, what about the guard itself?
I really like the RS unit….but it won’t fit my arrangement no matter how much I'd like it to. So my solution was to form some sheet aluminium into the most suitable shape my limited faculties could think of, then use it as a mold to replicate in carbon fibre:
With heat insulating foil applied to the inner surface:
Not “Corse-good”, but not too nasty? Maybe you shouldn't answer that.... (apologies, better pic to follow)
So the other rearset should be a piece of the proverbial right? Nah, this is me, remember….
I'd progressed both pegs at the same time…but what about the gear lever? I track Schwantz/Biaggi-style = road shift…..only much, much slower.
No problem, I can just use the nice Migliore gear lever, right? I could…but while I was going for the Corse-lite pegs this seemed like a good time to throw more industrial-strength goodness at the bike and see what sticks.
A few years back a kind gent was offloading an almost complete Metaltech 1098 gear and brake lever "set", including a few spare parts, for a very fair price. The gear lever is a thing of beauty, not quite the NASA spec over-complicated sexiness of the Corse unit, but not that far off, with a folding spring-loaded and rotating toe piece and great adjustability. Again, bearings rather than bushes, just a lovely thing to hold in your hand. It almost makes you want to ride barefoot:
For comparison and purely in the interest of generating excess saliva, this is a Corse gear lever (albeit GP shift) from the same era. Note the Ti nut/bolts, Mil-spec electrical hardware for the integrated quickshift sensor and Corse date/part # stamped inside the toe piece and on the lever extension. I have seen these come up for sale occasionally, but the price usually has 4 number's in front of the decimal point in a currency worth far more than our Pacific peso's:
But that's NASA stuff, the Metaltech gear is real-world lovely and was used by the Effenbert Ducati WSB squad back in the day (add Sylvain Guintoli to the road-shift crew):
The rearset hanger needed a lil’ clearancing to allow lever rotation = pretty straight forward.
So with that fiddle-farting out of the way, and the correct exhaust that doesn’t clash, I can finally fit the lower F06 fairing and get a real idea of what this bloody thing is gonna look like, right?
Nup! The sexy new gear lever is fouling the fairing cutout. GAAAAAAH! (note same issue on Syvain's bike above)
The lower fairing has a nicely contoured slot for the lever and shift-rod, but the 1098 Metaltech lever is sitting about 10mm too far inboard, because the lever is straight, vs the offset Migliore lever:
Fcuk! I didn't really want to hack up a genuine F06 carbon belly pan, and I have no hope of reproducing the integrated hex bolt/pivot shaft in longer form…I mean, how the hell do you even machine an allen-head recess?!
Eventually I came up with this: a longer Ti bolt, with a counterbored 7075 sleeve and 7075 spacer. It all clamps together as the bolt is tightened, allowing the lever bearing to pivot around the bolt/sleeve (original bolt/pivot uppermost, my kangaroo-engineering effort below it):
It's not quite as sleek as the original version but no-one was more surprised than me when it worked a bloody treat:
So now we’re sorted? Surely….
