I was encouraged to make a more thorough introduction of myself and my occational ducati adventures, so here goes nothing My Ducati journey started in 2002 with a 748, very nice bike it was and I kept it for two years. But by the end of the second season I was completely hooked on this MY2000 996SPS that was prowling the neighbourhood, asked the guy if he would sell it to me and much to my surprice a YES came back, not much to think about and I bought it. I had already got mag wheels for the 748 so they were transferred over to the new scoot. Looked like this first season (2004): The coming winter (2005) I couldnt help myself tuning it a bit, as thats what usually happens to any ride I have, then another tune at 2007 and by now it had a lot of special bits in there, eventually a valve seat came lose and locked the engine, luckily at a stand still, but damage was financially enough to consider a more modern engine to go in there. Lesson learned from that is to avoid special parts and use oem parts as long as at all possible. The 1198 was new on the market, and from the info I gathered it would indeed fit the frame and the swing arm would too. So I managed to get a brand new 1198 engine to squeeze in there. Took a bit of fiddling with airbox and exhaust headers to fit, but as I had the whole winter at my disposal it wasnt too much of an issue to get it going. Despite the last 996sps engine being really quick this was something else. And to make this story not too bloody long I'll skip to this years engine build. Its still 1198cc but its a 1098R bottom end with 1198 heads and 1098R cams. Since 2010 Ive had good time to experiment with settings on this engine family, trying stack length, cam timing, porting and sorted all that stuff out, which in the end makes a huge difference. Works brilliantly this little lump I must say. Since 2008 it has been a track bike only, but not much has changed on the outside: I have a lot of build pics should anyone be interested, just ask. Cheers! Tom
Hey Tom man! Good to see you over here on the (slightly) darker side. Things get a boring if we swear to much but fuck it! Other than that it seems like a pretty free and easy place and lot of discussion types are allowed without the Thought Police getting all purile and it seems more like a forum than someone's friggin 'home' ffs. There'll be a few familiar guys too. Good to see you over here mate - your extensive Ducati experience and empirical knowledge will be a great asset!
Its not the darker side to me, its the brighter side if we dont have forum policemen around checking humor. Pretty sure humour is a european thing and accepted here?
Ducatisti! It's Ducatisti! That's the plural of Ducatista! The Italian might be poor but the engineering skills and riding appear to be top-notch. Welcome!
