BellissiMoto's Custom Monster S4RS - The beginning!

[BellissiMoto]

February 28th, 2011

Guess what we have...

SICOM T-Drive Carbon Rotors!!

They weigh 780 grams each!

(yeah that's only about 3 pounds lighter than the originals!)

[BellissiMoto]

And we are mating them up with:

BST 5-Spoke Carbon Fiber Rims!!

[BellissiMoto]

March 10th, 2011

Shes starting to look like a bike again!

[BellissiMoto]

March 10th, 2011

A Carbon Dry Front Fender is installed.

Now if only we had the fuel tank to install...

[BellissiMoto]

Next up, Brembo Monoblocs!



That's all for now, stay tuned for more!

 [moto]

[TAftonomos]

Carbon rotors on the street?

I know CMC rotors stop well cold....but the only experiance I have with a real carbon rotor had me sreaming at the top of my lungs untill they had some serious heat in them.

[ducpainter]

Carbon rotors on the street?

I know CMC rotors stop well cold....but the only experiance I have with a real carbon rotor had me sreaming at the top of my lungs untill they had some serious heat in them.

It's all about the bling bro.

[BellissiMoto]

Well they aren't straight carbon, but actually a Dual Matrix Composite that seems to work very well in all conditions and don't require significant warm up.

[He Man]

but the only experiance I have with a real carbon rotor had me sreaming at the top of my lungs untill they had some serious heat in them.

Its okay, he has Bling Pro -No heat required (too much MW2?)

[Statler]

what tank is going on?   just painted stock or something that doesn't grow?

[junior varsity]

Are those calipers 108's or 100's?  Hard to see from here if they are the cast ones washed out by flash, or the billet ones.  And not sure if those are the dust-seal variety or the no dust seal and possibly ti piston variety.

I see the bling o meter stopped just short of nickel...

Are the rotors 320 or 330mm?


---  I like brakes for some reason.  I read about them a lot. I contact manufacturers and ask "why this and why that" much to their annoyance.

Here's an interesting set of tech notes I've learned recently...  Just focusing on two brands, Brembo and ISR, since both make monoblock 4 piston calipers for 100mm and 108mm radial fork bottoms (that is, euro and japanese), so are quite applicable to Ducs, and can include those with aftermarket forks.  (Accossato doesn't do 100mm...yet, Beringer doesn't do monoblock...yet, etc etc).

The normal Brembo caliper's pistons are nice... in that they are lightweight. From my findings, they are made from aluminum throughout the lineup. However this is not a good material selection for conducting (or rather, not conducting) heat... The Brembo upgrade to calipers with titanium pistons, then is not (obviously) for a lighter piston (they WERE aluminum!)... its primarily an upgrade for keeping the heat from getting into your fluid as easily (so great stuff for endurance racing), and they are 'harder' - less likely to nick and gouge and so on and so forth.    Coming back to piston material in a minute....

The OEM Brembo stuff comes with dust seals - great for keeping crap from the effected/used sealing surface area  and the pressure seal. Sure crap might rub and gouge and whatnot the most external edge of the piston by the pad backing plates, and chew on the dust seal, but not affect the fluid seal. Great! Except that the extra seal is absolute crap for piston retraction.  So in the GP calipers, those dust seals are not there. Great piston retraction means you can actually trail the brake off - y'know, progressively lessen your braking input, upsetting the chassis as little as possible, etc etc etc.

The other calipers that I have "lots" of first hand experience would be the ISR calipers. While they do make calipers for H-D and metric cruisers, their bread-n-butter is racing brakes (from riders in the small displacement GP class, to folks here in the US racing in various regional classes, be it WERA, CMRA, etc etc).

ISR chose to make their pistons from a highly polished stainless steel (not sure what grade, I can see if I wrote it down in my notes from my communication).  Why SS, when it is heavier? Because it transmits the least amount of heat of the three piston materials discussed here. So, while the downside is it is the heavier of these options, the upside is that it is very hard and transmits the least amount of heat.

Why does the hardness of a piston matter? Revisit the part above about improved pad retraction without dust seals, and you'd need to consider a piston that isn't going to gouge really easily where the gouge could interact with the fluid pressure seal (like when you ain't got no dust seals to keep them there pressure seals safe).   ISR calipers for Ducati motorcycles are billet monoblocs and have no dust seals.

Billet versus cast? Well aside from having to over-size cast parts for the same strength (and with more mass, more weight), the billet parts are more rigid than the cast pieces. For braking, a more rigid setup means the friction applied is translated into both more actual 'stop', and a more intuitive stop ('feel'), instead of some of that force getting used up by flex.   The transition from axial mount (like the OEM brembo goldlines - 40mm and 65mm mount calipers, and the GP calipers, 40mm mount) to radial mount calipers was for that big gain in stiffness. Likewise, the axial Brembo GP calipers were billet... and the higher end ones on the WSBK and GP bikes (and available for purchase, now much more reasonably priced since they are 'old tech') were monoblocs.   So the latest tech would be radial...billet...and monoblock.  Really polishing off the high-tech would be the radial fork bottoms in billet (again for stiffness and reduction in unsprung weight) but that's getting *REALLY* costly.

The most ridiculous calipers are those that are billet monoblocs that aren't just simple, conveniently milled billet calipers, but instead those with a 'reason' for their shape. I would expect to see more brake companies investing in the R&D to produce topographically optimized versions of each of their calipers.

[BellissiMoto]

what tank is going on?   just painted stock or something that doesn't grow?

stock paint on something that hopefully won't grow (i.e. the new (2011) replacement tanks are not supposed (key word is definitely supposed) to grow, and that's what Ducati claims to be sending me.

Now we could get into the part about why I've been waiting months and months and months for this tank to arrive, but I think the result of this delay is clearly visible in how it gives me reason to spend more money on the bike.

 

[BellissiMoto]

Are those calipers 108's or 100's?  Hard to see from here if they are the cast ones washed out by flash, or the billet ones.  And not sure if those are the dust-seal variety or the no dust seal and possibly ti piston variety.

I see the bling o meter stopped just short of nickel...

Are the rotors 320 or 330mm?

I needed 108mm spaced calipers to match the Marzocchi forks, and I got a screamin good deal on some overstock Brembo cast/forged 108mm monoblocs, so that is what's going on for now.

I am talking to Accossato, Discacciatti, and ISR though, so one of them might jump into the fray before it's too late.

Ohh and the custom ST4 we are building will have some KICK-ASS Beringer brakes on it that will probably make this bike a bit jealous...


Also the rotors are 320mm (can't get 330's in the T-drive set up), but I'm happy to use the 320's on the monster, I mean half the people with 1098's swapped down to 320's anyway.

[junior varsity]

i likely would swap the 330's for 320's if i didn't have have the jingle for the sicoms or braketech cmc's

[He Man]

overstock Brembo cast/forged 108mm monoblocs, so that is what's going on for now.

are they casted for forged? i always thought thye were milled.