Building a frame should be left to factories and professionals, plus jigs benders and all sorts of tools needed nevermind knowledge. Plus this isnt a plod along chop/brat streetwhatever. This bike is good for a hundred and silly mph and the chap plans on doing that. The work this guys done surpasses most pro custom builders in fabrication. Connor, I hope you carry on and complete your goal with stage2 as you havent shown lhs and I suspect you got big lump of battery box there! Difficult to finish bikes off once they on the road! I think double arm suits bike better. Hope to see the bike one day. Cheers.
A little more about the headlight and fairing I ordered the fairing from the same place as the tail - www.motoforzafairings.com Comes in three forms; 1 - full 'set' with headlight included, screen and hardware 229 EUR 2 - race version with no headlight 48 EUR 3 - What I went for, Just the fairing and screen 70 EUR...ish They also offer it in an aramid/carbon look which they just call 'performance' and for 15 of you European monies you can have bonded in headlight mounts, I opted against it so I could do it myself....they looked a little flimsy! And look what showed up.. Of course at a really really twisted angle. The screen also didn't fit that great, and by 'not great' I mean as the bike stands today it has a small crack in it! My headlight was designed for a Jeep Wrangler and never came with a bucket, two headlight buckets later I realised it wasn't a normal size... After cutting up a crappy ebay £5 headlight and bonding it to the metal backing of the new one, of course at a f*cked up angle to accommodate for the wonky mounts. Don't think i actually used that specific one... Next big bit of thinking was for the ram air tubes that were currently blocked by the fairing, the position of the fairing was determined by the gap between the tank and lower section as beautifully detailed below.. I wanted there to be an equal gap, something that the bike today has done perfectly, on SC's this is very close to the body, But SC's don't have big wide radiators.. You can also see how the ram tubes are blocked, I was careful during the whole build not to mess negatively with anything related to the performance. The only thing I was willing to neglect was aerodynamics, If you read 'Ducati 999: birth of a legend' by Alan Cathcart you'll know the bodywork was built around aesthetics rather than performance and the corse team who helped develop it weren't thrilled by the decision, So I don't mind taking a hit... I don't go 160mph very often. That being said I needed a way to get air through the fairing and I had a few Ideas Naca ducts.. very race inspired, I love them mostly because they are perfect for not disturbing airflow around the body. or... Those gorgeous slits. Both were a nightmare because the tubes were so close to the edge - hanging out the bottom in fact - and the fairing has quite a tight radius on the bottom. So I got a big hole in it. Nice compromise as it matches the shape of the tube I think, and after about 3 weeks of thinking I was ready to pull my hair out.. Getting the fairing to sit right was also a nightmare, It still doesnt sit exactly how I want it today! Because the whole unit is so flimsy it's diffcult to figure out how its meant to sit, These original front subframe 'hack job' tangs I made were pretty flexible to see where it wanted it to sit. Smart cookies will figure out the proximity to the clutch reservoir, yet another change! I'd still like to get a very light tint but for now it'll do. Now with a bit of nice red colour at the top of........? Anyone...????
I had a quick look at the elusive build! ...Its a *cough*... Kawasaki on the Ducati forum *cough*... Joking aside it is a lovely lovely thing!
I just noticed that in my profile picture you can see the circle I drew on the fairing to eyeball an Idea I had aha
I basically copied a 1981 design with modern T45 seamless tube and went up on tube thickness a little to over Engineer a bit from the origional. Then used Chad's facilities and skills to jig and weld it - although the tubes ended up being cock on when we jigged it from my taped together dry build Frame design doesn't need all that FEA stuff and to be truthful a lot of that is toss anyway. A basic understanding of geometry and historical chassis design is enough (especially when working with tube) and I'm sure Connor will soon want to experiment further Looking at his work so far
I work with Ford and JLR on new vehicle design / engineering and its 3 years as a generalisation. I get involved 1 year in and usually finish a year before launch, with about a year in between = 3 years 7 years and they would be out of date before they launched
Yes, they used thicker-walled tubing post 2006/2007 IIRC whilst continually denying there was a problem.
First time I've heard they actually did change the tubing. So the replacement frame Ducati gave me shouldn't have suffered the same fate as the original - good to know...
Compared to that 990 KTM build, I feel like a 6 year old drawing with crayons next to da Vinci doing his greatest work!
The more I read about ducati's development, the more I think they start with a wsbk winning rs model and figure out how the hell to make it into a production bike without destroying it..
