...your future is waiting for you." (Amit Kalantri)
I wasn't sure if I was heading back to the future or stepping forward to the past, but when the good folks at Competition and Industrial Coatings rang to say they had completed coating the 851 pistons I was pretty keen to put my near-Armageddon experience of piston/head/valve contact behind me. They had done a brilliant job ceramic coating the crowns (to reflect heat) and moly coating the skirts (to reduce friction):
They turned the pistons around in a week or so and were great with information and advice so I was very happy to have put the business their way:
The 96mm pistons (for 926cc with a 64mm 851/888 crank, or 955cc with 66mm 916 crank) with a 21mm pin are as rare as lips on chickens so I'd squirrelled away another used set I'd stumbled across, made by Omega, just as insurance. So I'd actually given CIC 2 sets to work their magic on. It's kinda interesting to compare the Pistal set I had fitted, with the spare Omega set given both manufacturers operate at the highest levels of motorsport. The crowns are very similar viewed from above but from there down they are quite different:
They are an even more interesting comparison against the OEM 92mm pistons below which look like they came out of a John Deer catalogue, with a monstrously thick crown and the skirt/webbing similarly chunky:
I was still waiting on the base and head gaskets to arrive so I re-purposed some of my new-found enthusiasm and re-opened Jenny Craig's weight-loss manual to the "
Dealing with a Ducati Dumpling" chapter: time to address the ugly/heavy plastic "truck battery" holder/panel.
The road bikes had a massive battery such as a Yuasa YB16AL, weighing 3.9kg (8.6lb) and the holder was obviously built accordingly, as you can hopefully make out in this old log book photo:
But the advent of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4 or "LiPo") technology has opened up some substantial savings in both weight and amount of real estate consumed, with a Shorai (or similar) LFX18 weighing it at just 1.0kg (2.2lb). Interestingly the YB16 is rated at 230cca , where the LFX18 is rated at 270cca so there is no trade-off in battery performance.
The old school lead acid battery for a starter-less Corsa race bike is of fairly similar physical size to the modern LiPo battery for a starter equipped road bike. After stumbling across a replica Corsa carbon battery box (similar to below), complete with regulator/rectifier mounting plate it seemed like an obvious solution:
Only for the Roman god of racing to think that was waaaaay too easy: the alarm bells started ringing when I come home one day to find a package
wrapped in a plastic bag sitting at my back door. Uh oh, I've seen that sorta bag before....
.....sure enough, on closer inspection it has the dreaded yellow Australia Post "It wasn't us!" disclaimer:
Those alarm bells were joined by red flashing lights and a civil defence klaxon once out of the bag:
So much for the "Handle with Care" stickers, and tape that says "Fragile" in several languages. On the up side: scissors were pretty much redundant.....
I was hoping and praying but Termignoni (Roman god of racing) gave zero fucks and sacrficed the carbon battery holder to show his displeasure, the battery compartment cracked along a couple of corners and the rec/reg plate...well, see for yourself. Termi was obviously well pissed:
(Walks to whiteboard and draws a line through "Plan A"......)
(Sigh)....my new-found enthusiasm wasn't looking quite so new at this point.
Oh well, onto Plan B (B for Beer, of course) with the mental lubricant assisting in roughing out an alternative plan to exploit the weight/size advantage of a LiPo battery....and hopefully please Termignoni.
Seeing as how Elon Musk chose to get involved with a space race rather than club racing an old Ducati (still waiting for you to return my calls, Elon....) a front mounted P8 ECU, twin injector throttle bodies and associated wiring harness were a financial bridge too far.
This is the conventional mounting arrangement on a Corsa-spec race bike, relocated from "the boot" (under the seat) to up in front of the dash between the intake runners:
But without the cubic dollars required to achieve the setup above it left a cosy wee spot a light lil' battery could snuggle into, putting a bit more weight where it was needed, over the front wheel.
Righto then, decision made. First up, battery supports fabricated from some ally angle:
Nutserts/rivnuts, whatever you want to call them, to secure the battery mounts:
Battery in-situ:
Not shown in the earlier logbook photo, but I'd since mounted the Power Commander on the old battery panel, as were the starter solenoid and main fuse, so they still needed a home. I could move it all up with the battery but then accessing the PClll for tuning etc would be awkward, as would the wiring, so it seemed like a fair amount of work for minimal benefit. A bit of ruminating/beer later and I and decided to just keep it simple stupid, knocking up a small carbon panel for those ancillaries, in the original location.
Steel starter solenoid bracket replicated in alloy, no, I don't know why I bothered either (apologies for the distorted perspective, they are actually the same size):
Carbon sub-panel "assembled":
Panel installed and wiring complete:
And we're about done:
Oh yeah, did you notice the white plug on the PClll up there? I'd taken the opportunity to fit/install a quickshifter (DQS - Dynoject Quick Shifter) and it could hardly be easier if you have a Power Commander fitted.
Just install the appropriate sensor (push or pull) depending on gear lever action:
Plug the lead into the Power Commander:
Then download the PClll DQS activation software from the Dynojet website (if I can do it, anybody can do it!), enable the shift cut and you're good to go: the default 60ms cut time worked well as did the default minimum rev limit but both are configurable if you want to play. Bottom line? It's the dog's danglers, I certainly wouldn't waste coin on a standalone quickshifter if you've already installed a Power Commander.
