I came back the next day to find a stink of fuel: the tank had a tiny weep along a seam. So much for my initial thought I would never have to worry about corrosion with an alloy tank. Not too much of an issue, but in removing the tank to repair the leak a core in the notoriously fragile cable entry for the fuel pump/level sender broke off right at the previously repaired sealed transition. Hmmmm, awkward. And the oil pan (from the Snap-On "Kitchen" range) was there to capture oil from another weep from the front cylinder exhaust rocker cover, which had a hairline crack from the original accident. The temperature gauge had also decided to sit at 3 o'clock no matter what temperature or time it was. Yeah, there were still more than a few issues to sort.
But, I'd had productive 3 weeks away on nightshift and found a guy in Europe advertising a variety of eproms for the P8 ECU. Turned out he had a vast selection which he burns as necessary. He's keen on the old 851/888's as well, and hearing about my lil' project he was very kind in sending half a dozen different options for the price of one. For all the talk of Ducati owners only being interested in finding reflective surfaces in which to admire themselves there are a lot of really good people out there. Thanks Laszlo:
I'd also snaffled an old Power Commander lll. My plan was to experiment with the chips, pick which felt best via the bum dyno, and then trim it up with the PClll. It is possible to make a custom chip, but the knowledge and equipment is hard to find these days and the tuning process is more laborious, where the PClll is just much easier all around. The limitation of the PClll, which does allow individual maps for each cylinder, is that it doesn't look at ignition maps but in reality very few tuners go down that route anyway.
Best of all I'd found a way forward with the exhaust.
The classic Termignoni "spaghetti" systems of the Factory/kit race bikes are unobtainium, and while copies are available they are priced for Arab sheiks not lowly tradesmen with the arse falling out of their overalls. Luckily Aussie Ducati tech legend Brad Black has carried out some testing on a cost effective alternative:
The poor ol' 851/888 are a little strangled by their 40mm headers, and he set about comparing a couple of other options, so left to right we have 40mm 851/888, 45mm ST4 and 50mm Ducati Performance (DP) 50mm systems:
And these are the results, green is 40mm 851/888, blue is 45mm ST4, red is 50mm DP system:
More detail here:
The DP system is very pretty in the flesh, but the ST4 looks even prettier on the dyno, and looks absolutely gorgeous on the credit card statement.
So the anti-glam ST4 exhaust was a no-brainer....but was surprisingly tricky to find given 99% have kerb damage on the front header.
But what about the cans? ST4 aftermarket would be a simple bolt on and could be swivelled to a jaunty angle but they all looked just a little bulky and "I wear a cardigan-ish" for my liking. I was pretty well buggered for quite a while.......until my brain did it's usual "cough-cough-fart" and woke up while looking at something completely unrelated. Don't ask me, I don't know how the fuggin' thing works....but I was looking at some mid-2000's WSB stuff and saw this pic of Max Biaggi's Alstare GSXR1000K7 with the twin Arrow cans:
And I realised I was looking at the thing I never knew I always wanted. Here's a better look at a similar system:
So one Ebay search later, a cheeky bid, hold your breath for 2 1/2 days and......winner! Seller's pic's:
They aren't going to be everyone's cup of chai latte, definitely a risk, but my mental image had them being just a slightly fresher look without being jarring. Fingers crossed.....
The next difficulty was going to be finding someone to glue it all together.
