It's been 6 weeks since it last ran at Mallory where it survived the trip with very few problems. The detailing part has taken longer than expected but we now have (or have on order) all the parts needed to complete the job. I have also come to the realisation that this bike will never be returned to stock - the initial plan was that if I ever wanted to sell the bike, the original parts would go back on and I would sell the trick bits separately. The project has now taken a life of it's own and when the angle grinder came out last week, I resigned myself that this is pretty much a one-way journey.

EXHAUSTS
They were fitted for Mallory and but we were not happy with the positioning of the pipes. Granted, the pipes are made to work with the existing tail but with our tail chop, the cans just extended too far past the frame. There was no other choice, the angle grinder had to make an appearance.

Due to the slightly flared ends on the carbon, the cans were not able to be shortened. We then held the cans into the preferred position and worked out the cuts. The MV seat unit sits quite high on the frame so wanted the cans to sit parallel and fill the space under the seat. All pretty straightforward but with the new can position, the seat lock was obscured. It was at this point, that "Feck it, just do it" was uttered for the 100th time and off came more of the frame and along with it, the seat lock. This was when I realised, I was at the point of no return - although Dave and Mark probably knew that months ago. I've always been a bit slow to catch on.

The pipes now seamlessly blend into the seat unit so a bit of repolishing and they will be back on the bike.
In hindsight, the Ducati Performance kit (filter, chip cans and link pipes) was a bit of a waste of money. The DP ECU is to be replaced by the FIM unit and the pipework have been cut about so much, it would have made much more sense to buy some shorter end cans and fabricated the pipework. In fact, the filter is the only part of the kit used in it's original form - it must be the most expensive filter in history.

DASH REPLACEMENT
An extensive search led us to the door of FIM (Fuel In Moto), an Australian tuning house, who make programmable replacement ECU's. There is very little wrong with the bikes fuelling as it stands but the replacing of the original clocks opened up a can of worms due to the built in immobiliser. After speaking to Ducati UK, John Hackett and Sigma Performance, none of them could guarantee anything that could bypass the immobiliser on the factory dash. This really strikes me as being slightly strange being that a large part of Ducati's image is linked back to it's racing heritage. Why they would make bikes that are have immobilisers that are nigh on impossible to bypass is beyond me. Yes, I know that is the point of any security system but if you wanted to race an S4R (unlikely, I know) or a Monster 620ie (reality in the DesmoDue series), then there 'should' be a relatively simple way to remove the speedo.

As it transpires, FIM have developed a replacement computer - the Ultimap U59. The main benefit of this unit is the ability to bypass the immobiliser which in turn allows us to fit an alternative dash. It is also fully mappable for fuel, rear cylinder correction, spark and the rev limiter - this allows us to increase the rev limit so it's on a par with the 996 bikes.

This, of course is all in theory. The chip and dash will be arriving within the next week so we will soon find out either way.

SEAT UNIT
This has been painted and fits nicely over the existing Monster seat. The indicators have been modified so that the lenses are now clear with the indicators set further inside the seat. The result is a much brighter turn signal which of course will be handy on it's next track day outing - I found it a bit difficult trying to get my knee down and doing hand turn signals at the same time. . The other small mod is a one-piece lighting connector so that the original seat and the MV seat can be swapped if ever the need arises.

The seat will be recovered in Alcantara if we can find a close enough red to match the Candy Red paintwork. Vinyl may be used as a second option as it has a wider range of colours but will also be much cheaper - alcantara is £70.00 per meter!

STEERING DAMPER
This proved to be quite complex. The S4R damper only works with the handle bar mount so thought that using the S4 clip-ons kit would prove to be a closer fit. Dave could only get this to work by using parts from each kit which would then be extremely expensive and then leave a steering damper kit which was next to useless. The S4 kit option wasn't close enough so Dave went back into the workshop and fabricated another damper bracket. The set-up now looks much tidier and more importantly, the four handlebar mounting holes will all be re-used rather than looking like something is missing.

RADIATOR
The radiator has been removed to be painted black. On the S4s, it was black but on the S4R it was changed to silver. I don't think that anyone has ever thought that the radiator was one of the nicer parts of the bike so why Ducati chose to make a feature of it on the newer bike, I don't know. The fans and carbon side panels are black so we decided the bulk of the radiator would be lessened somewhat by being darker.

While the rad was off the bike, it is amazing how much better and slimmer the bike looks - much more of an improvement than I expected. This in turn got us thinking (again) and are now looking into making a slimmer and longer radiator that would be much more discrete - perhaps double thickness but not nearly as wide yet would still have the same mass as the original.

OTHER BITS
The correct quickshifter has been installed and the Ohlins remote adjusters have been repositioned for the third (and probably not the last) time. The removal if all the rubber frame ties mean that the we can't just run additional wires all over the bike as it would undo all the earlier work of cleaning up the lines.

The mirror mounts have arrived from the US and I have also managed to source some 996 switchgear and throttle assemblies. The clip-ons meant that a lot of the original switchgear wouldn't fit to the bars. The fast idle switch is now on the throttle and the LH switches have been replaced by 996 items.

The main hold-up now are the imminent arrivals of the FIM U59 chip and the Translogic dash. The dash will allow us to finalise the front end - the brackets for the headlight, indicators etc. The chip to see if the clocks can be removed and being able to get the bike to run. The bike is slowly taking shape and hope to see it on the road (all being well) by the mid-end of August. Fingers crossed.