Help a brutha out!

This could be painful folks.

I'm at a complete loss as to how my brain works. I mean, I'm looking around the inside of my skull and it's like a local government office at 4:30pm on a Friday, there are no visible signs of life. It must completely head fcuk anybody looking in from the outside....but at least they have the blessed relief of being able to walk away.

So what have I done this time? I went through all that palaver with the swing arm, cutting, prepping, welding, more prep, and painting. Eventually I got to stand back and look at what I've completed...and haven't completed. For the love of Fabio Taglioni why didn't one of you politely cough, tap me on the shoulder, and point at the box on the shelf which should have been in the 'bin with the contents bolted on the bike?

In reassembling the back end of the bike I've completely forgotten to fit the rear shock hydraulic preload adjuster I've been sitting on like a mother hen for the best part of a year

So it all comes apart again, in truth not that big a job but hella frustrating/annoying...and I was bouncing off the limiter when I realised the adjuster didn't even work: the seller rubbing OCD flavoured salt into my self inflicted wounds by draining the oil for international shipping. Oh well, it can't be that big a job, can it? It's not often I'm right, and let's just say this did nothing to improve my batting average.

Things would be reasonably straightforward for a simple top-up of a (partially) functioning unit, just wind the adjuster (and therefore piston) to maximum range, then add oil as you adjust it back the other way, oil will be drawn in to fill the unit.

But from absolutely empty it's actually pretty bloody awkward. You need to get oil into the thing through a tiny 3mm port, but with the piston fully retracted and no means of driving it, how do you generate enough vacuum to draw oil in? It doesn't willingly flow in through such a small opening when the displaced air is concurrently trying to flow out.

FYI: it is my understanding Ohlins specify their 5w fork oil. Alternatively, it seems to be fairly common practice to use ATF. I had some 10w ATF on hand which is well inside the fork oil range, so that's what I used. Please do your own research on this, it's bad enough if I break my own ass, I don't wanna break yours too!

Eventually you capture enough oil to generate some piston movement which accelerates progress, but then you find even the smallest amount of air remaining or introduced limits the piston travel...or worse, over-filling results in the piston being pushed completely out of the body at maximum range. ("Guilty as charged, your Honour.")

The fast track to success was manufacturing a small nipple to fit the bleed port, with some hose to a syringe, removing air intrusion from the equation. Next time will be much faster but I'd much prefer if next time never comes!

But eventually success begrudgingly arrives like a sullen teenager:

All good? Realistically, yes. Trackside adjustments will be infinitely easier rather than fiddling around with C-spanners alongside a hot exhaust. The minor trade off is that the hydraulic unit consumes 37.5mm of real estate on the shock body: where spring changes could previously be accomplished by simply fully backing off the locking/adjustment rings, now a spring compressor is required....but I'm struggling to even get to the track and remember which way to sit on the bike, I'm not going to be fussing too much over spring rate when I already know it's in the ballpark.

On a slight but related tangent, I took the opportunity to adjust the rear ride height (via that gold threaded strut above). Actually no, that's not really accurate, my intent was to adjust the swingarm angle, which is achieved by adjusting the ride height. The strut is on the other end of the pivoting shock rocker, so lengthening or shortening the strut moves the shock and therefore swingarm in relation to the bike.

A lil' revision: this is the 749R shock and rocker. The 749R rear suspension is unique amongst Ducati sportsbikes, built for the strict World Supersport rules it has a race ready "flat" link/rocker vs rising rate for the rest of the range. As a result a unique shock is required and the stroke is considerably shorter, with a much harder spring. I've already replaced the (too hard) OEM spring that ate tyres like a labrador eats breakfast with something more appropriate for my weight.

Considering the chassis arrangement from a 1994 916 right through to a 2011 1198 is basically the same it should come as no surprise there is a fair bit of information out there regarding setup. I was pretty happy with the setup I'd arrived at on the 749R so had just replicated that on the 799RS project.

But recently I'd stumbled across some interesting stuff with regards swingarm angle: 10.5deg - 12.5deg being generally accepted as the optimum range for a modern sportsbike. So with both ends off the ground and fully extended the swingarm measured at 10deg, a lil' on the low/flat side. So what? Here's someone who knows far more than me:

So the ol' girl will tend to scrabble for traction like a dog on lino, maybe not super obvious with the middleweight 749R but the 999RS engine will be a significantly larger herd of ponies pulling the chariot and thanks to less internal rotating mass is also quicker to rev. So I increased the ride height a tad to have the swingarm angle at 11deg, which should give it a bit more mechanical grip.

You only know as good as it's ever been, you don't know how good it can be, so it's going to be interesting to experience the change.

Next up: "The following is a Public Service Announcement!"

A while back I found something a lil' unnerving: the head of a broken M8 Titanium bolt lying next the 851. WTF?!

As you can see it has snapped quite cleanly:

Excuse the grubby/rusty looking threads, that's just the remnants of anti-seize compound.

But what gives? Titanium is supposed to be tougher than Chuck Norris, M8 is not a small bolt, and these (securing the rearsets) have had very little stress with no impact damage. I was quite taken aback to be honest.

But some research revealed an error you can learn from: there's Titanium and then there's Titanium....or to be totally correct, there's Titanium and then there's Titanium 6Al-4V, respectively known as Titanium Grade 2 and Titanium Grade 5 (there are Grades in between, but these are the most common specs).

Ti Grade 2 is pure Titanium, Ti Grade 5 is alloyed with 6% Aluminium and 4% Vanadium. Both are extremely light (half the weight of steel) but the alloys in Grade 5 give it incredible strength and toughness, where Grade 2 basically has neither of those attributes, instead being incredibly corrosion resistant. Horses for courses.

As I'm unlikely to encounter liquid chlorine in my travels I'm only interested in the strength component, so how much of a difference are we talking about?

Grade 5 Titanium 6Al-4V has an ultimate tensile strength of 827MPa.

Grade 2 Titanium has an ultimate tensile strength of just 276MPa.

For some perspective, that puts Grade 2 Titanium tensile strength at well under mild steel (440MPa) and around the same as tempered 6061 Aluminium, with the Ergal/7075-T6 Aluminium I mentioned a while back having twice the strength to weight ratio of Grade 2.

Bottom line? I couldn't find weaker bolts if I tried

I know 6Al-4V is the dog's danglers, but somewhere along the line as I've compared costs across a few different suppliers, I've missed the spec and ordered the incorrect grade for my application. The perils of parts hunting on nightshift, I guess. So I spent a couple of beers (my preferred unit of time measurement) trawling my memory and poring over the bikes replacing any suspect bolts with known good 'uns.

So this is just a heads up: Grade 2 is cheaper than Grade 5, so if you see what looks like a good deal on Ti bolts make sure to check the spec.

This last is just pure indulgence. I mean, who doesn't like a bit of Britten in their day?

There's so much to look at here it's almost overwhelming but I'm just going to pick out a couple of things that strike me, if you're of a remotely technical bent I'm sure you'll have your own points of interest:

1. THAT incredible exhaust, I find myself involuntarily reaching for earplugs just looking at it. I get the thinking behind the reverse megaphone, and the scavenging effect of the 4 into 1, but I'd love to know the theory behind the loooooong primary tubes. John Britten never did anything just for the sake of it, so being a 60 hour time investment I wonder what the brilliant man was thinking, vs the short split stubs you see on a Desmoquattro.

This is obviously following the same ethos, KTM's Moto3 RC250GP one-lunger with a completely separate exhaust for each port. Clearly John Britten had something in mind, I'm just not sure what, which isn't entirely unexpected given we're at opposite ends of the intelligence bell curve:

2. There is more than a hint of both V2 and V4 Panigale going on, isn't there? The V4 style pipes and monococque layout (swingarm off the back, steering off the front with only the engine joining the two). The Pani hints at what a lot of riders said would take the V1000/1100 to the next level: a V1000 with a telescopic fork front end. John designed the Hossack front end to mostly mimic fork dive to give a "conventional" feeling to the rider, but as cool as it was it was almost universally seen as a limiting factor for most riders.

Giandrea Fabbro, Pani designer, penned the 1098 as a fully intended derivation of the 916 so I wonder what his inspiration was for the Panigale if it wasn't the Britten.

Hmmmm, wrecked Panigale 1199 to V1000 rep? I'll be needing more than a few beers to join the dots on that one....

Some interesting Ducati trivia re John Britten: his first serious foray into building his own bikes in 1985 was Ducati based, in conjunction with mechanic Mike Brosnan who stayed with him through the entire Britten journey. They both had 900 Ducati Darmah's which they decided to turn into race bikes. The good? The engine. The bad? That Golden Gate Bridge wheelbase and chopper style steering rake.

From an AMCN article:

The "Aero D-Zero" result is undeniably weird, but the concepts are massively evident in Motogp today. The great photo below is actually Gary Goodfellow aboard "Aero D-One which had very different underpinnings but the exact same fairings as "Aero D-Zero":

But remove the ungainly looking Aero D-Zero bodywork and you're left with something that looks much more purposeful:

This photo was taken to illustrate the steering angle and wheelbase similarity between the Britten/Brosnan creation and the 916 which arrived 10 years later. It looks long 'n low devoid of bodywork, but rummage around in your imaginary shed/head, pull a seat/tail unit off the shelf, bolt it in place and it starts to look radically short and stubby compared to most other sporting motorcycles of the mid 90's (GPZ900R, Katana etc). People thought John (and Mike) were ahead of their time with the V1000 but they were ahead of their time long before that.

Where am I going with this?

Ducati just this week released their new Superquadro Mono engine, an up to the minute exercise in engineering a modern Supermono engine. Huge bore, short stroke, the thing is basically half a 1299 engine and pumps out a class leading 77hp.

So far so good...until you find John Britten was (again) way ahead of them: his final project was to build a "half-Britten" single based on the V1000 as a direct competitor to the Supermono. By this time John had been diagnosed with cancer so the race was on to have it up and running before he passed. Shown here is his unique top end solution bolted to a V1000 bottom end for the sake of expediency:

If it all looks fairly conventional at first glance, look closer.....is that a barrel throttle body, eliminating the butterfly from the intake tract? And port injection? It's a single yet I can see 2 different size intake trumpets....and what looks like 3 inlet manifolds?

This is a better angle:

So what you are looking at is a 6 valve single, with 4 inlet valves and 2 exhaust, and multi-port injection. 2 of the inlet valves open at low rpm with the other 2 chiming in at higher rpm, maintaining high intake velocity and therefore power across the rev range.

Not radical enough for you? The barrel and head were a single casting:

Sadly, John passed away 2 weeks before so never got to see it run, but with zero development the 608cc thumper pumped out 75hp and weighed less than the Ducati Supermono equivalent.

And with that we've come full circle, thanks John.