Definitely not-Need all the ventilation you can get there, I’ve fried two different rectifiers already!
749 2003 vs. 749S 2003 crank 14621011A vs. 14621071A piston 12221102A vs. 12221151A cams 14821661A, 14821681A, 14821651A, 14821671A vs. 14821921A, 14821901A, 14821931A, 14821911A
M'Lud... I give you a fairing is not clean, which you expect a Ducati to be. not dissimilar to a boy racer adding spoilers & vents to a Corsa... M'lud. Another M'lud... Here's a factoid for you... Claudio Domenicale who headed up Corse at the time got them to junk the single sider, of which the early concept was not a million miles away from the 1098 arm (which wasn't a million miles away from the MV F4 arm), and put a bifurcated arm on the bike. Terblanche worked under Tamburini on the 916 as well, and so was pretty adamant that he wasn't going to basically just add lipstick to his previous bosses sculpture. He also has a great love for Deco golden age Industrial design langiage and, and that comes across in heaps on the 999. Also before FEA stress analysis became more widely available outside f1 and aerospace, lets face it single siders were shite massive slugs of over engineered casting. A normal swingarm even if solid was always going to win the performance per kg game. From 1098 on you had the benefit of FEA to design the construction properly and allow engineers to thin out as safely as possible - its why wheels don't weigh as much as the ark royal anymore - you don't have to second guess a safety margin and pray the thing won't do a Dunlop on you. When Claudio Domenicale became the CEO of Ducati, the man who said junk the arm, said put it back... and was hailed a hero for doing so. Go figure! You'd come off bikes that for a decade had been bulbous and rounded, with big wedge tails and three clock clusters. This was a total rethink about what a sports bike should be. If the legislation and the technology allowed there would have been a single small projector at the front. As it is even now the best LED dual beam lamp that hella can offer is a 90mm unit. Tamburini had seven years to mess with the F4 before it went into production, the 999 team had barely three years to throw the successor to the 916 out. That would have translated to about a year of studio work, a year of engineering time and the final year testing and prototyping for pre-production and final production. That's not a lot of time, but Ducati were forced to speed things through as now the 998 was up against GSXR-1000 and R1's. For sure, to a purist, like the harley purists, it doesn't matter how shit the thing is, nothing will do other than a Harley, and that's fine if those Guardians of the brand's Aryan genepool were at the dealer every two years buying the new model, but they're weren't and very few are in the position to be able to do that. Ducati like any other manufacturer like their loyal customer base, and want to keep them happy, but your side of the bargain is that you buy bikes. Like anyone who makes anything, if you're not spending with them you're voice counts for little. He wasn't really interested in pleasing the pantah piss and werthers brigade who were never going to buy one anyway for example, they wanted to keep the tills running and that meant that part of the challenge was to give the perception of change to those that had been put off from buying during the 916 era. A ducatista for instance will put up with short service intervals, dry clutch etc, all the quintissential Ducati traits which we call it's soul, but for many it was a turn off - hence now, long service intervals, no dry clutches, its evolution driven by the demographic. they could of course have stayed the same, never changing and pumping out 916's but then they'd be in the same shit that Harley are in now... but that's for another thread. In that respect the 999 brought a lot of people to Ducati who were not Ducatisti. Many of whom were returnees after coming off Japanese bikes onto the 916 and realising that ergonomically they just didn't fit it. I'm fine as at 5'7 with a short inside leg me on a 916 is like a frog splayed on a breeze block, but many just couldn't get on with it. Remember how many used low mileage 916's used to be on sale in the mid 90's for that very reason. Love them but can't live with them. Before Terblanche asked the question, only tourerers were accepted as having the luxury of adjustability, and one accepted that all sportsbikes were like Suzuki 500GP to it's riders... you break yourself to the fit the bike. The thought that you could have 30mm of range in length and height to play with was amazing, and it wasn't done by anyone else for years. What was essentially a "everyone is doing that for no other good reason than everyone is doing it - so I'm not going to do that" meant that the angularity of the 999 has aged incredibly well. It also helped that during that time Alan Jenkins was at Ferrari F1 and lent a lot of time to Ducati to discuss the aero on the 999. The nose fairing is an interesting one. there's an area of separation just at the tangent of the main curvature to the leading edge radius. The headlamp hole breaks that separation causing re-attachment of the airflow a lot earlier (in section). granted this was probably by circumstance rather than design. The upper cut-outs in the nose were an attempt to minimise drag adn frontal losses and their angle of attack tried to manage the air around the rider's shoulders. As it was, on track the riders didn't like it so it disappeared for he 2005 facelift year. The deflectors again, all to do with managing the airflow - in this case the wake from the front mudguard, to try and minimise vortices which occur on the leading edge of the fairing and spill off - it's essentially what a barge board tries to do an an F1 car - you're just trying to move air around or hold onto or manage air that 's coming off the front wing. Here's another factoid for you... The deflectors were there as a package protection measure. So, the reparto Corse at the time were taking an interest in aero, so the idea was that if that area was modular, and a better solution was found - say winglets or a secondary vane, then they could be implemented into that design. Now what this meant was that they would only have to bring out 150 bikes (driven by production numbers of the manufacturer at the time) with that deflector changed as a limited edition a la foggy rep to homologate a new aero mod.... good eh! Going back to the back end, he actually never liked the final production exhaust system - for him the exit holes were all too small and it's belly was too fat, but production engineering forced his hand on it. The motocorse system from japan was actually near as damn it close to what he was seeing as part of the bike's design language in that area. He didn't see why thre should be a big slab of plastic hiding the end cans either - a philosophy he carried through to the M900E. Like I said, I'm bias and I love it probably because of all the reasons people dislike it. Speaking to Fillipo Corticelli about it just makes me love it even more as the stories behind why its like this and not like that just add to the whole 999 journey. anyway... I'll stop now.
@final_edition A bit, but the side fairing already has a huge exit vent for the radiator unlike 999 which exhausts from the trailing edge of the fairing
I’m well aware of that believe me, I’ve changed it twice but that area needs all the airflow it can get!
Great post Sev, thanks. Like I say, the 999 is definitely growing on me as a classic & for sure the V4 is a huge ‘visual challenge’ too. Most Ducati’s look fantastic down the years, they always stood out, the 999 was certainly ‘different’ on that we can agree
My SS was a nightmare to ride in a breeze. You had to be aware of every farm gateway that could blast you off course. None of that with the 999. Solid as a rock - there was a reason for that complex fairing.
indeed, much like when the 998 and 996r went to the smooth flanks and removed the air off ducts on the side fairing. They opened up the area between the quarter turns to allow hot air to escape. Now an interesting thing as well is static heat soak. Sometimes big holes aren't always better. Some tests have shown on vehicles that some big openings - dependant on location and shape actually pull hot air back into the engine bay when the thing is parked up thereby increasing engine bay temperature until things equalise out. You get to a point of course, where you don't have an option but to carve a dirty great hole if the heat rejection is too great for your exit to cope with. I wish I could get hold of the cad models for the 999 fairings as I'd love to put them through cfd and see what they spit out.
I rode a 1299 panigale at the weekend that boiled my bollocks, a 999 gets warm when the fans cut in but not that bad..
One thing that impacts the aesthetic debate around the 999 and 749 is that I don't think they photograph particularly well. I saw a 749R recently and, in the flesh, it was stunning in a way that images of it just didn't convey at all. The flow of the "whole" makes way more sense than a profile or nose-on shot.
Never ever got too uncomfortable on the pani !! Hot but not boil my spuds hot but having grown up on the 748\996 I absolutely hated the 999 when they released in 2003 but about 4 years ago I really started to like them ! So took the plunge and its is leagues ahead of my 998 !! There I said it !!! I feel dirty now
