Bloody hell, am I reading this right...these are 70HP and 118 dry kilos?????!!!!! Must be bloody good fun, is there an enduro version?
Yes there was. Rode a 450 version off road and can't say I enjoyed it that much if I'm honest. Just the way it delivered it's power for me rather than it being a bad bike.
Yep - my mate had one which cleared on field (overtook all of his mates) then exploded at the other end.....that was literally all his time on the bike.....paid 7k for it for 10 mins of riding...
Little bit of a step back....after getting the tail section cerakoted ive noticed there was a hairline crack across the top of the pipe so had to take it to a local ti welded to get it patched up....not the end of the world but itll need to be recoated at somepoint.
On the plus side - now ive got a good fitting plate to fit the exhaust and repacked it. It sounds tons better. Also, ive just received a replacement rear wiring loom so hopefully should be able to finalize the rear lights/indicators. Also got the short mudguard support so i can finally mount the front light.
Lets hope Mrs Sofa has his life insurance renewed accordingly. My money is still on a hedge somewhere. Those things are absolutely nuts.
I know....even to the point last week we started it up in the garage (so it was resonating) me and my mate had our fingers jammed in our ears shouting at each other..... "fuck me its noisy" - mate just started laughing....lol
Very good day yesterday - very good... a little thing but finally got the rear brake light working....a combination of factors i think... tail section of the loom was pretty ropey. One of my cheap chinese lights didnt work/ was faulty, blown fuse which i didnt realize ran the front headlight (it wasnt connected while i was testing) and also ran the brake light circuit as well.. So, thats done now - will be moving on to tidying up wiring and panelling. Just scored a NOCO lithium battery brand new for 70 quid...i was hanging out til the end of the month but saved about 50 quid so the card took it on the chin for that one... Also from a styling point of view i was 50 50 on lever guards or handguards....went with lever guards as i got a set of brand new (but never used by the seller) solid alloy guard for 30 quid...anyone that uses the (you only need one leverguard) argument....i challenge that when you get a windmirror to the fist at 30 plus.... Anyway...exhaust re-assembled (not tackled the recoating but that can wait..) - fuck me it sounds better...still loud as fuck but sounds great.
Spent a couple of hours in the garage last night...some quite nice information...apparently my split rear back box is a VDB factory section (apparently all the vdb tail sections split in the same place and the exit pipe albeit 2" long is round on the vdb's and a different shape on the newer ones..so he says!) and the front panels (with the stickers) also VDB...and i was going to remove the stickers..! - the lad that told me is building a VDB replica (and has been really helpful with information and spares so im gonna donate the front sidepanels to him in return for his unsticked black ones. The rear subframe was a bit twisted (rear numberplate was leaning to the right a little and not square over the rear wheel) so used a breaker bar to twist is back the other way...looked like it was about half an inch to the right over the rear wheel. All back together and now straight.
Yeah - i know...one of the lads gave me the Model Number - apparently the NOCO's have very very high cranking amps...i currently use JMPs on all my other bikes but the NOCO was more than twice the amount...searched on ebay and a private seller had a brand new one...sent an offer which he accepted...i was lucky.! i think these noco's are supposed to be 100 - 120....i will say though im really really impressed with the build quality - and the multiple mounting points of the terminals....very heavy duty...
I didn’t know NOCO had entered the battery market, used their chargers for years. Useful info, thank you. Andy
Polishing duties yesterday - itll be a bit of a picture overload....but essentially i was working with wet and dry only from a 400 grade to get rid of some really deep scratches on an old headlight mask (im not going to use it) so thought it was a good test....to my red sidepanels that came with the bike but had some old stickers on them....which came of pretty clean so i was happy about that. I would say i had moderate to good results. Im in there again tonight as while the wet and dry worked very well, using the cream and the sponge based buffing pads gave the rear mudguard clearly the best finish...brace for the photos....!
So pretty horrible but, as i say with a mixture of various grades ive gotten to a smooth finish - if i get chance tonight (whic i hope to) gonna try to get a deeper finish with the sponge mops and the polishing cream (ooh er madam)
Plenty of patience needed. Looking forward to the end product. I wonder if Ducati will put the new 450 engine in a supermoto? Now that would be interesting.
Dunno but from my point of view i cant see the point of owning any othe supermoto apart from this one....77brake @100kilos puts it way above anything out there i think the 698 is 70brake @ 160 kilos...the only trade off is regular oil changes...very regular but i can put up with that...not an issue.
