That's a beautiful piece of work Bazzer. I'm in awe of what you have done. Well done and congratulations. I hope to see it in the flesh one day.
I have been unhappy with the silencer... and decided to make one in Stainless Steel, out of one I bought off Ebay, this time re-packable, and also with a removable baffle for MOT time. Even without the baffle, its acceptable (with my ears!!) with just the resonator now its packed properly.
The bike is now running, it sounds fantastic! I balanced the carbs with the vacuum gauge. I prefer to use a single gauge as its far more accurate… if ever you have a bank of gauges connect them up to a single vacuum source and check they are calibrated. most are WAY off! with a twin I simply use a “T” piece and clamp the pipes individually with a pair of pliers, alternating from one cylinder to the other… the clamp in the picture is to damp the needle on the gauge. Its a VERY accurate way of doing it… makes a huge difference to the tick over. Below is the initial configuration of the Ignitech ignition.
Well here you go, just a short clip... I did take it up a very short private road and it pulls well and sounds... LOUD, but awesome!
Still not sure if I like the seat. The important questions, would you like to be able to build and own the bike? Hell Yes. In every ugly duckling a swan is waiting to emerge
The seat is growing on me, but the quality and build of the rest of the bike is totally brilliant. I wish I had those skills and the space to try something like this myself
Thanks guys. I took a long time decideing on the seat... i made several different mock ups before deciding on the hump look. I had been just staring at it for half an hour, in the end my wife came into the garage and asked me if i was OK! I went with it because i liked it, and it takes me back to my youth, cafe racers, a kind of nostalgic thing... i knew it would divide opinions and it does! I do like comments though, positive and otherwise, as often i cant see past practical! I do love the riding position on this bike, and want to keep it but am looking at changing the handlebars slightly.
That’s a quality build, you’ve done really well there. For me the seat unit looks great, sure you could fit something angular to match the tank but I’m not convinced it would improve the overall look.
Awesome build skills, wish I had them. Bike looks great apart from the seat to me I'm afraid, it doesn't go with the style of the tank.
I managed to get a Ducati Performance map and popped the advance data into Excel, along with the data from the Ignitech file. here is is in graph form. the Ducati map has 32 points on the RPM scale that are mapped, and the ignitech 10, which I feel is plenty. A lot of early electronic ignition bikes had two... tick over, and full advance! my old Jota jumped from 10 degrees at tick over, to 34 degrees at 2000 RPM! there is an alarming blip in the Ignitech graph which may need some investigation when its on the road. the Ducati map is what I am used to seeing on other cars I have played with. It will be easy enough to replicate the Ducati figures into the Ignitech map though... my mate showed me how to interpolate to match the different scales... but I glazed over after 15 mins!!!
As always there are snags on a build like this… I have always been worried about the head of fuel the carbs will get… it was OK with a full tank, but not enough to give me a reserve position on the tap. This was overcome by fitting a small electric pump, but this showed a weakness in the float needles in the carbs, Any leaks here is above the engine so I bought some new and genuine float needle valve assemblies and set the float heights to 14mm with a gauge I quickly made up. Easier to do if you clamp the float into position with a washer… no leaks after they were fitted…
A couple of pictures under the seat…. the alloy rod is the tank stay velcro holding it in place! wiring is nice and simple on this one! I mounted the ignition module on stilts with small rubber feet ( i used the original ones from the multistrada clocks) to insulate it from vibration. This is probably the last post for a while... I will update again once its been road tested... anyone interested, this is the link to my blog, where I have my other projects... https://jtccc.wordpress.com/ But for now, the hunt is on for another project... I would like it to be another Ducati, but I am not ruling anything out! so if anyone has anything at the back of their garage gathering dust that they might sell... get in touch!
Love the attention to detail with the wiring. So often it is the smaller unseen areas of the bike that go unnoticed and ironically these are are often the trickiest elements to get right. Nice work!
I managed to get the raw data from some Ducati ECU files. I have colour coded it to see the pattern of the values in a visual format (isn’t Excel brilliant!) Across the top is the RPM, and down the left is the TPS values, The lower values are throttle closed. these follow what I would expect to see on a 3D advance map. I hope to replicate these in the ignitech map on the bike. Just need some decent weather to ride it!
I know you know the seat is one thing many are marmite on but the thread is great for the level of detail on the build is not only informative but great for those who also would love to start a project too. Chuffed you're happy with the bike
I normally start the hunt for a new project in the summer, ready for the following winter to be sure I have something to work on... this year its all been a bit quick! I have not quite finished the Multistrada when along came another Duke... an ST4s this time. it runs well, bit is a little tatty ( the pictures make it look better than it is...) It was a bargain price, so I could not resist it! For the moment I am going to sell off some of the bits I definitely know I wont use, and then put it to the back of the garage until the winter, when I will start the build in earnest... thats not to say I cant do little jobs not sure what this will be just yet... time to think about it! Maybe start another build thread?
