The gearing and the weight will change the acceleration times, but they will not change the engine power output. Hands up those of you on here that have ever tried to do the 0-100 acceleration as fast as possible and then hands up those that would notice 0.2 seconds faster. I keep my hands down for both.
I know they won't, but you're still correct to a degree in 0-100 times, but I think you'd be surprised what a tooth down on the front can add in the 'seat of the pants' dyno. Still, the original point still holds some weight, why have Ducati promoted the 10bhp more 160bhp engine when nobody has seen anywhere near it?
Totally agree with your last sentence. The trouble is that I would not really care. Life is too short to be bothered about a few bhp. I ride the 848 SBK at the moment, but my next bike will be a Multistrada. I will buy for the great technical features rather than the power output and as long as it puts a smile on my face I will be happy. I will never use more than 80% of the full power of any bike that I own.
Honestly I don't give a $ if the XR is faster or if the power is less than 160HP. But I could tell you that I am unhappy when I ride with passenger I can reach 220kph with 4th gear, and then I shift 5th and 6th just to save fuel and reach max. 235kph and the juices of the bike are finished. There's something wrong with the delivery of the power on the DVT and my gut says that it's deliberate. I am convinced that this motorcycle with that same engine could go definitely up to 280kph but you'd had probably to invest in the next model or maybe the one after it to get there. I have patience to wait one year for one more model update since Pikes Peak was a big disappointment. After that I have to look somewhere else before I am too old to drive fast bikes anymore.
For most of us a long ride at anything above 160 kph would result in the loss of licence and then we would not care what the power is as we would not be allowed to ride!
Larger roads have little to do with speed limits and speeding penalties. We do not have any road tax at all on any of our vehicles in this country.
170 mph on a multi? Good luck with having the front end cut thru the wind at that speed! Its noticeable on track that over 100 mph is when sports bikes pull yards, and that will be both power and resistance 145 mph is plenty for an upright, long travel suspension bike imho
The subject is not about the roads, the legal speed, the acceleration, the weight, or the gearing. It is about the lie of the manufacturer, of the claimed 160 hp. The previous model was strong enough and fast enough. I would still buy the multi if the power was the same. But what made Ducati advertise 160 hp? What do you think? Was it, the fact that, in the same bike segment, KTM came out with 160 ponies? Or was it the fear that BMW's four in line (a known powerhouse from the s1000R) would steal sales for a "small hp increase"? My guess is that Ducati COULD produce 160 hp and with a flat torque curve as advertised; but the emissions and noise levels could not be met worldwide. Ducati wanted to get the DVT to the market too fast-and their R&D needed more time. And honesty is in question; now that mother company VW faked emissions in the diesel line, in the biggest scandal in automotive history. DO WE BELIEVE THEM FROM NOW ON?
I think this topic is really about spurious precision. The top speed of a bike/car or the power output of an engine can be measured electronically to one-hundredth of an MPH, or one-hundredth of a bhp precisely. Publication of such a figure creates the false impression of exactitude and repeatability. But the measurement is only of a particular machine on a particular day under particular circumstances. The variability of circumstances and machines is such that these kinds of performance figures are simply not definable or repeatable to this level of accuracy. Ducati produced an earlier model for which they claimed a ball-park figure of 150 bhp. They now produce an updated model with a little more power, for which they publish an arbitrary figure of 160 bhp. If somebody has measured one on a particular day at "152.32 hp", well I think that is close enough and evidently more than 150. I actually bought one, and I'm not complaining. At least not about the power output.
I You realize that 152.xx hp /= 160hp right? At least BMW doesn't lie about their engine performance.
Bike magazine publish a tested rear wheel figure of 142 bhp for the 2015 Multi. If you add back in the rule-of-thumb 10% lost in the transmission that gives just over 156 bhp at the crank. That makes Ducati's claimed 160 bhp sound fairly reasonable. You can lose the difference just on altitude and atmospheric pressure on the day of testing. Also there is no standard test rig for measuring crankshaft power figures. Different manufacturers use different set-ups and some are measured at the gearbox. I guess the practicalities vary with different engine configurations. If a non-factory source sets out to measure direct engine power it would be very surprising if they came up with the same figure as the manufacturer unless they used exactly the same rig under exactly the same conditions. And since the manufacturer is always going to test under optimum conditions to obtain the most favourable result, and no doubt tests several times choosing the best figure for publication, an independent one-off test would do well to match the best figure from the manufacturer. Don't worry about two or three bhp, just ride the thing.
The problem with all this is that all manufacturers should quote Horsepower at the wheels. END OF Have you ever tried weighing your bike that another load of tosh, 0-60 times Mpg CO2 ITS ALL WRONG............ Stop whining and just ride it, fiddle about with it if you want They are conforming to regulations from some Europen boffins .
Personally if it has 160 or 150 I don't care, but what does annoy me is the dip in the mid range. This is very noticeable and a hindrance, but most of all is totally misleading to the torque graph that Ducati publish (still to this day) for this bike and is my only complaint of an otherwise mighty machine. Ducati should be held to account until they can supply a map that can duplicate the torque curve graph that they themself still advertise
