Monster 1100 Engine In 900ss Frame

So, a bit of progress. Dry run of the complete electrical system went without a hitch. Can't fire it up properly until the timing gear is changed, but it turns over, fires coils and injectors, and runs the fuel pump. Pleased with that!

 

A bit more done on this project. First, the new timing gear has now been fitted. Aside from needing to buy a crank holding tool to torque up the flywheel nut, it was a straightforward swap. Started out with the horizontal cylinder at TDC (as per the cam belt pulleys). That lined up the dots on the timing gears. Then simply slide the gears off and slide the replacements on with the dots aligned.
The original timing gear. You can see the two sets of missing teeth 180 degrees apart.
Then, the gear set from an 848 with only one set of missing teeth:

Next on the list to tackle before the first start (hopefully early next week when the oil cooler hose fittings arrive), was to do something about the oil temperature sensor. The 1100DS engine has a sensor mounted on the vertical cylinder. Unfortunately, it is a 17k thermistor whereas the 5AM ECU wants the ubiquitous 3k one. So, choices were 1) fit the valve cover with sensor from somethings like the 2008/09 Hypermotard, or 2) change the thermistor inside the sensor. I went for option 2 as I wanted the reuse the existing sensor.

The original sensor:

The sensor housing drilled and the new thermistor ready to be potted in:

The reconfigured sensor all finished:

And then there was the conundrum of what to do with the ambient air temperature and barometric pressure sensor, both of which are usually on the CanBus. As I'm using the original 900SS gauges, there is no CanBus. The solution is the combination sensor from 2008-09 Hypermotard (as others). It connects directly to the ECU but meant I had to find a place to mount it and then wire it into the ECU.

Here is the sensor:

Shown with the mounting clip that I 3D printed. It clips onto the gauges bracket in front of the headstock.

And lastly, made good progress fitting the replacement fuel pump from a 1098 to provide sufficient fuel pressure. No pics of that yet.

That's it for now, waiting for a few small OE Ducati parts, and the flywheel holding tool. Aiming to fire it up early next week.

 

A post about converting the fuel tank for fuel injection. The original pump doesn't produce sufficient fuel pressure for the fuel injection of the 1100 DS engine. It needs to be nominally 3 bar (43.5 PSI). Pretty much any of the more modern Ducati fuel pumps will work, although installing it in a standard 900SS tank was going to be slightly challenging. After looking at a few of them, I decided on one from a 1098 as it seemed easy to disassemble and easily available.
The pump in the 900SS is in a rubber sleeve that is held by a welded-on clip inside the tank. It seemed reasonable to try to fit the bare pump from the 1098 in the same place. The 1098 pump assembly also contains the pressure regulator (essentially a blow-off valve), so that will need fitting to the 900 tank as well.
Here is the complete 1098 fuel pump:

Return hose connection removed. The pressure regulator housing and new hose fitting will go there.

And the pressure regulator fitted to a new housing to be screwed into a new tank fitting:

The fuel pump components ready to be fitted to the 900SS tank. The green hose delivers the fuel from the pressure regulator back to near the fuel pump pickup.

The retrofitted fuel pump, filter and pressure regulator inside the 900 tank:

Fuel pressure is spot on and no leaks!

 

The first attempt to start it is always a slightly nerve wrecking moment, especially after such a big conversion. Happy to report that it fired straight up. And, while the fuel map is from an earlier Hypermotard, it actually runs fairly well. Still, it'll go on the dyno next week to dial it in properly.

 

So, today was dyno day. Objective was to optimise the fueling, idle control, and ignition of the 5AM ECU to suit the 1100 engine and the bespoke exhaust. We took a calculated risk on the increase in exhaust diameter and cross over configuration.
Well, the results are in. Very happy with 105 bhp at the crank and 81 lbs-ft of torque. Nice and linear. And slightly better than the 1100 Evo. The only hiccup was that the side stand switch polarity is reversed.
The red graph is the initial run which was already surprisingly good. The blue is where we ended up. Values on the graph are at the rear wheel.

 

Now that the bike is running I thought I'd post a bit about the electrial work that was needed on this project. It was easily the most difficult and time consuming task. It would have been easiest to use all the electrical parts from a 2010 Monster, same as the engine. The problem was that no one seems be able to reprogram the Siemens ECU to run without the CanBus dash. This project needed to run with all the original 900SS switch gear and dash. That meant a different ECU was needed and settled on an 5AM, which I already knew would run without its CanBUs dash.

The next step was to find a wiring loom the match the ECU, support the idle control valve, the twin spark setup, the oil temperature sensor, and the separate air temperature/barometric pressure sensor. One such choice is the 2007/08 Hypermotard. As it turns out, it doesn't like to run without an immobiliser, even though we disabled it in the ECU. More on this later.

Next was to figure out how to integrate the existing 900SS dash and switch gear with the Hypermotard ECU and loom. The power feeds, fuses, and earths are pretty straightforward. The dash indicator lights are a bit more difficult and needed a bit of rewiring of the indicator light cluster (see wiring diagram below). The next problem was that the ECU wants separate starter and kill switches, whereas the 900SS switch shares a common. So, the switch itself needed to be converted to a four wire setup. Then, of course, there is nowhere to connect the mechanical tacho from the 900SS. A electronic tacho is required (more on this in a later post, maybe).

Here is the modified 900SS wiring loom diagram:

And here is the modified Hypermotard wiring loom diagram:

As mentioned above, the Hypermotard ECU program didn't work without the immobiliser. It would not allow the engine to be started and showed an immobiliser fault code on the GuzziDiag software. The solution turned out to be to use an ECU image from the Classic GT1000. All was well and was then mapped to suit with the result being the previously posted dyno graph.

This might be the last post on this project as the bike is now running really well. As soon as the weather allows, a road test will be in order!

 

I presume you mean tacho. The idea is to use the guts of a later model Veglia tacho as used in some Guzzis and transplant it into the original 900SS unit. I really want to preserve the look and feel of the original dash.
More to come...

 

Yes, no change to speedo.

 

Tacho conversion

As the original 900SS tacho is mechanically driven, an electronic alternative was needed for the 1100DS engine. There is no cam gear to drive a mechanical tacho. Obviously, there are lots of electronic tacho units out there, but I wanted to retain the original dash. The original tacho is a Veglia unit and they certainly have made plenty of electronic tachos including for vintage Ferraris. Also, Moto Guzzi started using them in some of their 90's bikes. These looked to be about the best candidate to transplant into the original 900SS tacho.

After a fair bit of research, I ended up with this one from a Moto Guzzi California 1100 (right side):
You can see that they are very close externally, so it made sense that the overall construction was similar. After a bit of disassembly, we have this:


The original 900SS unit is on the right. The annotations show what I had in mind.

It became clear that a new internal mounting bracket was needed, not least because the back shells are different depth. Also, the dials have different centre-centre distance between the mounting screws. So, after a lot of measuring, I 3D printed two adapters, one to hold the movement and external connector, the other to mount the dial without having to drill new holes.

And now for a bit of assembly:


Here is the assembled movement ready to go back in:

Next was the electrical aspects. Moto Guzzi uses two impulses per rev, essentially a wasted spark setup. The connection to the 1100DS engine is just an ordinary coil connection, so one spark per rev. This meant modifying the electronic circuit. Drawing out the diagram and referencing the integrated circuit at the heart leads to this:


According to the data sheet, a single resistor controls the scaling. Based on their formula, that 180k resistor needs to be 410k resistor. So, with that changed, I was able to calibrate the tacho for 11,000 RPM (183.33 Hz) and one spark per rev.


And finally, the end result. Doesn't look any different, except for the electrical connector on the back. But then that was the idea.

 

Well, finally went for a test ride this afternoon. Hadn't ridden one of these in a long time, but that 1100 engine suit it perfectly. The extra bhp and torque is certainly very noticeable. Wouldn't mind having one of these in my stable.
Gratuitous naked shot.