And so it is with a pain in the arse.
I'd had a Febur 749RS radiator/oil cooler setup squirrelled away for some time, but I was conflicted about what to do with it: install it on the 749R or the finally underway 749R/999RS (799RS) project? It's quite cool (no pun intended), with expanded cooling for both water and oil, but the arrangement of the inlet/outlet revolved around keeping the godawful OEM cast alloy thermostat housing, something I was very keen to avoid, at least for the 799RS.
A comparison of OEM 749/999 radiator and the Febur unit:
As you can see there is an additional small radiator above the oil cooler, and both rad/cooler cores are thicker than OEM, with the inlet/outlet configured to suit the OEM hoses/manifold. A well funded race team would have gone for the big-Daddy uber-expensive 999RS setup but those a little more financially challenged would have pumped for this arrangement.
But this is one of the things that sticks in my craw: the alloy coolant manifold/thermostat housing alongside the horizontal cylinder:
I dunno, it just offends me that they have bolted a dirty great lump of alloy weighing near enough to a full kg (880gm) onto a supposed sportsbike, just to hold the thermostat and temperature sensor:
I would have loved to "lose" it, but realistically I was left with an election-like conundrum: what was the best of some pretty crappy options?
Eventually the 749R got the shits with my procrastinating and decided to make an executive decision, developing a slow weep from the OEM oil cooler. Righto, I hear you, decision made!
I had a way forward with the manifold.....but it's not one I'm proud of. On the upside, at least it halves the weight of the thing. It turns out Ducati must have shared some of my concerns about the manifold...either that or they simply went for a cheaper option, in making the exact same thing in plastic. As much as it leaves a bad taste in my mouth the $/kg saved ratio wasn't too bad, costing the pricely sum of $30 used, but it's no improvement aesthetically is it? (rhetorical question, no need to answer, I know it looks crap):
But it's job done, just install the rad and cooler....(tick)...plumb up the hoses...(tick)...remount the battery/ECU/reg panel...(clunk)...remount the...(clunk)...what the hell? The starter solenoid mounted bottom left of the panel was impacting the lower radiator. D'oh! Then the penny dropped: a race bike of RS spec would never be running the OEM panel assembly, they'd be using something like this instead:
So yeah, this is where the language got a little, er, "colourful".
I could modify the panel and relocate the solenoid, but I already felt more than a bit "half-arsed" going with the plastic manifold, so I sat down for a beer and a think: one I'm good at, the other not so much.
I kept coming back to something I had reserved for the 799RS: a used Febur 848/1*98 alloy race battery holder:
....which is obviously a fraction of the size/weight of the OEM 749/999 malarkey:
Realistically the OEM heat shield alone probably weighs as much as the complete Febur battery holder:
Eventually, after reworking the upper alloy mounting bracket, and turning up an alloy stand-off for a lower mount in behind against the engine, I had a tidy enough result:
The final piece of the puzzle was another forced effort: the OEM oil cooler hoses were fractionally too short to work with the Febur oil cooler (cue clenched teeth and more muttered curses). Unlike the RS engine where I had to work with some unique push-fit fittings in the engine, the OEM cases employ simple metric M14 threaded ports so it was off to my local Aeroflow stockist for some new braided hose and alloy fittings to put together this lil' lot:
So there we have it, the job that kept on giving, lol.
Out of curiousity I threw the old girl on the bathroom scales afterward: 166.0kg total, with no fuel. So despite carrying maybe an extra litre of water (1kg), in the last year or so we've managed to lose 3kg from the initial measure on the scales at the track (169kg). Nothing extraordinary but it's a lot better than the Ducati's supplied "194.7kg - in running order minus fuel" from the manual.
