First impressions on tire change and mapping

First rides of the year done and results are positive. Improved traction out of turns, longer tire life and new mapping provides way more mid-range.  A bit too much at the first race of the year (Swedish Ducati Club championship). Wheelied to much of the start and lost a few positions, but ended up at the podium (3^rd place)

Big thanks to Tom at Italia Bike Centre for the mapping

 (www.italiabikecenter.com)

Got inspired and plan to try some Nordic BoTT races (nordicbott.net)

New fancy start numbers for this season

200/60 tire conversion

The 1098 comes with 190/55 spec rear tire. This tire hasn’t been updated for years by Pirelli and I was recommended by my suspension guru friend,Jocke at FJJ Racing to modify the bike to fit a more modern 200/60 tire. Reason being this tire profile provides more rubber to the road at any lean angle.

Easier said than done, no one I talked to could provide good instruction and most US communities was full of posts with people who had opinions but no knowledge. Anyways, I dug deep into my engineering skills not used for a long time and came up with the below:

1. 15/40 gearing. With taller 200/60 tire this provide exactly the same rubber to road gearing as 15/38 on a190/55 tire. Since I ride some pretty long straights like Motorland Aragon I need that ratio anyways. You need a 520 race spec chain with 2 more links. 100 links instead of stock 98 links to get clerance to the swing arm.
2.  Machine the rear brake caliper to be able to move the rear wheel further back. You need 13.5 mm (27/2), if you use Pirelli since the Pirelli 200/60 is 27 mm higher than a 190/55 on a std 1098S rim. The tire would otherwise touch the swing arm as mentioned above. No 1 in the drawing is the item you need to modify and sen in picture below. My new swing arm lengt is approx 505 mm.
3. Longer rear wheel height adjuster. My starting ride height is 204 mm and for that I ran out of threads on my rod. I had some damaged threads and didn’t want to push my luck. I bought a Corse Dynamics rod from NF Racing in bad taste gold.

Added benefit is longer swing arm “ by 15 mm which I am told improves handling.

No 2 I the drawing, the spacer was stuck. I had to use heat from the outside, and cool spray from the inside and then a determined whack with my rubber hammer to get it off. Make sure to grease these things properly. Not done by previous owner on my bike.

Tire measurements fitted on std Ducati rim

190 tire 635 mm height, 193 mm width

200 tire 662 mm height, 200 mm width (3.5 mm closer to chain, but converting to 520 chain solves that issue)

Bike re-mapped

Dr Tom at IBC in Arboga, a wizard when it comes to mapping and Ducati tuning in general paid attention to my bike today. I usually ride the bike using the 6k-9k power band. Top end power was obliously not what I was looking for. As you can see we ended up with a nice fat and flat power band with high torque. One graph shows my bike (red) the other graph illustrates a comparison with mine bike (red) and stock bike (blue) with full race system. My DB killers were left in all the time. You can’t ride on Nordic race track these days without DB killer. Tom of course also adjusted the cam timing for that nice mid range power. Obiously better to spend money on mapping the electonics, than full race systems!

I have slip on´s, DB killers, stock headers, stock air intake, tuned cams and  JE pistons.

My bike (red)

My bike (red), stock 1098 with full sytem (blue)

First track days, Mantorp Park. May 1-2

So, finally, snow has melted and my old friend Magnus (Former Endurance rider and now track day geek and fellow Ducati 1098 rider) lured me into 2 days of track day. Really early in the season- May 1-2. In Sweden it can be summer or snow at this time of the year. We brought 4 kids, 2 motor homes, 2 Ducatis and one wife to the track for 2 days of riding and socializing. It was really cold 7-11 C (low fifties F for Americans). Thanks Lena for being there for the kids!

In the race group things where OK for most people but a lot of people falling in the middle group. I guess people with slicks and maybe not able to have enough speed to keep tire warm enough? Magnus and I have about the same speed so we had great fun riding together and figuring out how to best pass the BMW S1000 RR´s in he corners.

The bike worked really well. New pistons and serviced suspension was what what we did this winter, not much so instead I decided to work on my riding position on the bike to find speed and to my surprise I carved our 5 seconds from my personal best. Very crowded, so it was hard to get a lap without traffic, as seen in this clip. Far from the lap record , of course, but only 3 seconds of the fastest rider that day. 1.25.6 was my best lap winch I was able to capture on camera. 

New and more solid pistons

Early 1098´s ridden hard on tracks are prone to develop cracked pistons. This can be costly or worst cases cause a blown engine. To avoid this I asked Italia Bike Centre in Arboga, Sweden to replace the stock pistons with improved one´s from JE pistons. These pistons have an attractive price and have stock compression which is what I look for – long engine life.

My best lap at Aragon

Just got back from 5 days on Motorland Aragon. The track cannot be described in words, you have to ride it. Imaging entering turn 16 at the end of the back straight at 240 km/h with full lean. Just crazy.

Like most of my friends, I had to capture the track on video so I got the Gopro Hero 3 Silver edition and was lucky to capture my best lap around the track

Motorland Aragon

Off to 5 days of hopefully great riding at Motorland Aragon is Spain. The MotoGP guys just raced there, so for sure there are some interesting lap times to compare you to.

In preparation for this trip I had to change the gearing since this track has one of the longest straight and having fairly big elevation changes I had to make sure the chain was god enough, so I replaced with a new one, Some friends who were  there last year broke some chains. Fast fluid track and going uphill puts a lot of strain on the chain.

Greven Racing Adventures organized transport of the bike and Hotel. The pictures are from last weekend when we loaded our bikes in the huge trailer. I feel like a pro racer having other take care of the bike, and me flying to the track. Unusual feeling