Waste of money .....

[MonsterHPD]

Well, as mentioned ( I think ...), the big-bore waste of money did not happen this time, but I figured I´d do some small things at least, like putting in a lighter flywheel. So, preparing for this, I machined a stock flywheel thoroughly, but not extremely:

20170102_204208 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

For whatever reason, Ductati does these flywheels in some proper hard steel, it´s really hard and when machining, you´re exposed to an intense barrage of sizzling hot flying machined-off chips.

However, when I remove the left side engine cover, I find this:

20170401_171111 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

Whatever it is, it´s not a stock flywheel, I don´t remember putting it there, it´s probably lighter than stock, and I save myself the trouble of checking in detail ... the outside diameter is almost exactly the same as my machined one so ut should be in the same wheight cathegory.

Whatever this time I´ll resist instinct and just leave this one as it is :-)    

    

[koko64]

But a glorious waste of money

[stopintime]

..........
Whatever this time I´ll resist instinct and just leave this one as it is :-)    

 

[MonsterHPD]

Not very well stated .... just meaning this time I´ll be lazy and resist the urge to rip it all apart just to see exactly what it is 
 

[stopintime]

........resist the urge to rip it all apart........
 

 

[MonsterHPD]

Well,
uncaracteristically I resisted the urge to waste this particular amount of money and leave the motor as it is; after all it´s working very well.

Instead, I finally got around to adress one of my main dislikes of the Monsters: The wide footpeg arrangement, put there just so Ducati could flog high-pipe exhausts. All the aftermarket rearsets I´ve found retains this caracteristic, so no luck there.

I´ve spent quite a bit of thinking about how to get a robust arrangement without using the support points down on the crankcases. Ducati has one solution on the single sides swingarms, but that uses a protrusion on the swing arm spindle, which moves with the sing arm. This is inconvenient if one wants to use the swing arm spindle as a support, and it took me a while to come up with a possible solution. Simple as it may seem, a picture says more than a 1000 words:

2018-04-28 15.22.43 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

In this way, I use the hanger structures on each sida s a support for the other side, creating a quite stiff box structure. The riding season will tell if it works as planned.

The hangers are water-jet cut out of 10 mm alu plate (6082 or 7075), and slightly agricultural as the whole thing may seem, at this stage it´s mainly a concept test. If it works as planned (hoped? ...), I might get around to making a more elegant CNC version ...

2018-04-29 18.16.25 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

    

        

[koko64]

  good solution for you.
Very nice bike. I bet she handles well too.

[MonsterHPD]

Koko64,
well, for what she is (a 15 year old bike with design roots at least double that) I´d say she handles well. She´s also been the test mule for (almost) countless Showa and Öhlins fork set-ups, and a few for the shock as well. So far, never let me down.

[cencalal]

Good work on those rearsets.  I had the same issue on my M695, but lacking the fabrication ability, I had a good result using the footpeg brackets from an ST4.  These moved the pegs up, back, and inboard about an inch and a quarter (32mm) each.  Damned if I can post a photo from Postimage.org, though...

[MonsterHPD]

Good work on those rearsets.  I had the same issue on my M695, but lacking the fabrication ability, I had a good result using the footpeg brackets from an ST4.  These moved the pegs up, back, and inboard about an inch and a quarter (32mm) each.  Damned if I can post a photo from Postimage.org, though...

I also considered using the ST pegs, since I had a set (I use the ST master cylinder and hose as you can see; always nice to be ablet use some parts from the bin. Money already wasted :-)), but then I would have had to weld new brackets for the pasenger pegs to the frame, and I did not want to do that.
I still have to organize the passenger pegs (looking at LSL parts from Germany, if I can get them to sell me some ....), an with this arrangement I use basically the stock setup as far as pasenger pegs and silencer mounting are concerned.  

[MonsterHPD]

Hello,
not too much happening with the M800 for this riding season, but I did get a pair of 4-pad calipers. It will be interesting to see how they perform on the track.

2019-02-03 16.44.34 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

I also decided I´d better installa new finl drive, after all the current set is 10 years old and has covered almost 20K km (mostly in the dry, but anyway ...).

However, it seems I was overly ambitious on this one:

2019-05-07 19.42.07 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

Almost no stretch, no kinked links. I think I´ll stick to my "DID-only" policy!

 

[MonsterHPD]

Well,
With the riding season more or less done for here, time for some reflections and plans.

The 4-pad calipers have been working really well; I can´t say I notice much difference on road, but on track I do not have those "oooppsss" moments when I go from the M800 to the track bike (with monoblocs). With the standard calipers, I´d always overbrake when I got on the track bike.

One thing that has been worrying me is that the motor was running very hot: the exhaust has been getting blue all the way down to the silencer; it´s worse that the photo suggest:
2019-07-12 15.18.31 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

Since the plugs were also bone-white, lean mixture is the obvious reason, even if the bike was running well enough (almost on par with the 900SSie rain bike).
In order to solve this, I finally bit the bullet and got a Microtec ECU for this bike as well; luckily I got a good demo ex at a reasonable price.

However, when I got the ECU on the bike, with the Microtec base map, the bike refused to run properly. It would start and idle well enough, but would not accept large throttle openings, or high revs, and would eventually start to run on one cyl (max!), and just barely take me back home.
At first I thought this was a mixture issue, but after several experimental richer maps without noticeable improvement, I went for the last option: Install the bigger ignition coils from 900SSie, etc.
 
20190919_094855 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

The reason for this was that on my old M900 I had a Nemesis ECU, which is basically a “Micreotec gen 1”, and it had a very annoying misfire at about 6000 – 7000 rpm. I tried all sorts of things, but only the bigger coils finally brought a 95ish% improvement. Luckily, I had all the bracketry etc still lying around so it was a quick operation. It might not be so pretty, but it totally solved the problem...

Next topic is to get a reasonable mapping, and luckily I was able to borrow a Microtec M163 Lambda controller:

20190723_123925 by torbjörn bergström, on Flickr

It´s a very convenient piece of kit: Plug in the lambda sensors, define what A/F values you´d like in the throttle / rpm map, and go for a ride (even if a rolling road would have been better). I went for 12.5 & 100%, 12.8 & 90%, and 13.2 at 80% throttle. Even now, after just some initial runs on road, the bike runs better, and at least the plugs looks healthier. I think it also makes a bit more power, but seat-of-pants impressions can be deceiving ….

For the winter, I really intend to get those ST2 cams in, if possible with  stock pistons. A few hp extra can´t be wrong for the track days, and I really enjoy riding this bike on track.

I have used the same Bridgestone S21 tyres for 2 summers now, and there is still quite a bit of thread left. Before those, I used a set of S20´s for 3 seasons, but I started to feel uncomfortable on them even if they also had quite a bit of thread left, so I put the S21´s on. I suppose that´s a good thing with low-powered bikes; the tire account is not that high.

I am very happy with the Bridgestones, by far the best road tIres I ever had, wet or dry, but I assume that they can only take so many heat cycles before they start to go off. The ones on the bike now still feel fine, but I assume I´ll have to change them during next summer.          

[koko64]

 
Wow, you go all the way. PCV not available.

[Speeddog]

Perhaps it's a setting in the ECU?

It's been ages since it ran, but I recall no such issues with the Microtec on my S4.

Different coils, so perhaps not relevant to your issue....

[MonsterHPD]

It might be possible to find a setting in the ECU for these coils, but since the big coils worked perfectly, that´s where I´ll leave it for now.

When I had the Nemesis on my M900, I was in contact with a person who knows these things, and tried some advice from them (mainly different dwell times for the coils), but no noticeable difference.
The primary resistances are very different between these coils, if thats the problem or something else, I do not know.

I have only seen these coils on the 2V monsters, I don´t know about the S4; which type of coils do they have?