Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

James roseland's Ducat; 999 F04 DUCATI 999 F[]4 TECH: Same Only Better The Ducati 999 F04, which took James Toseland to the World Superbi ke cro wn and the Italian marque's 13th Manu· facturers t itle , is essentia lly a near-clone of its predecessor. Neil Hodgson's championship-winning F03, says Ducati Corse's Superbike technical director, Ernesto Marinelli, who also stresses that the 16 privateer RS04 motorcycles supplied to Ducati's clients this past season had exactly the same specificat ion and po wer ou t put as the F0 4 facto ry ra cer. "This year, we didn't work on getting more performance out of the motor," says the 31-year-old e ngineer, who also heads up the R&D team responsible for the 999 street bike. "But we spent a lot of time making sure the parts last, te ristics of the newer 999 chassis. The big-bore engine's soup -plate -sized valves and amazingly high 15.8: I co mpress ion ratio, fed via the single-injecto r Magneti Mare lli EFI with its trick MF5 ECU, help deliver 189 bhp at 12,SOO rpm , courtesy of the 60mm th rottle bod ies homologated as a kit part . The st reet 999 uses S4mm ones, and had the superbike restrictor rule gone ahead for 2004, as pro posed by the MSMA, the Ducati twin would have been fo rced to wear SOm m intake rest rictors - giving it less air to work wi th than the vo l- because you hate to see a D ucati stop. especially when it's a ume productio n road bike! And another key ele- bike you so ld to a private tea m. But when you're making close to 200 horsepower with a twin-cylinder engine, you're running pretty close to the limit mechan icallyon everything. and this for sure affects durab ility. Y must change the right ou parts at the right time, and while things like the cra nkshaft and the gearbox go on for ever - well, unless you don't use the clutch at allfor downshifts like Regis, and Troy Bayliss before him, in which case you're going to have to step up m ent is t he ultratrick, all-titanium, two-into-oneint o-two -in to -one "tubone" exhaust (as in " big transmission re placement pieces quite a bit! - we have to ma ke complete engine rev isions every 1000 km and change a lot of stuff, especially pistons and con rods . Valves last a little longer, to around ISOOkm, and rockers we only change twice a year, but the fact that the Fila Ducati team had no mechanical DNFs allseason tells me we 've got on top of the durability situation ." The rash of mechanical failures suffered by Ducati custom ers this season - twice w hen headed (or a rare privateer race win - might tell otherwise and certain ly highlightsthe raz or-t hin line the hyper-tuned V-twins are run ning to deliver champi onship-wi nning power. "But if you have the performance benefits of a factory tube " - though "drainpipe" might be a better ter m!) , m easuri ng 63. 5mm in diamete r, wi th the twin tailpipes ru nning into a single , titanium underseat Term ignoni silencer, w hich features exten sive intern al baffling to allow such a meaty pipe to beat t he noise police . The large water radiator, which features an offset slot for the front cylinder to poke throug h, incorp orate! a triangularshaped oil coo ler in its lower section to cool the tr ick Shell Advance lubricant, which the oil giant's Ge rman-based race department has develo ped by worki ng closely with Ducati for a num be r of years - just as it do es w ith its Fe rra ri ne igh- bors at Maranello. The resu lt is som e remarkable, low-drag, 10/40 and IS/40 multigrade lubricant. which Marinelli says has been a cr ucial factor in the Fila Ducati tea m's strong reliability reco rd, as has Shell's special unleaded V-Power race fuel, which helps delive r the horses . There's also an air duct to the right of the cylinder head whic h feeds cool air to the rear cylinder 's upper camdrive be cause the short-str oke engine . you have to follow the same maintenance schedu le as the facto ry t eam ," says the race engineer fo r o ne o f engine revs so hard that the belts can overheat and stretc h, Ducati's custo me r squads. "We've fou nd the hard way that in fact this means a service lifeof not longer than 750 km for ducts, des igned in accordance with the new 2005·model 999 styling derived from the requ irem ents of racing, have bee n w ind-tun nel developed by 8ritish aero dynamics guru Alan Jenkins, creator of the Ducati De smosed ici MotoG P V-fou r's Cagiva V594-inspired bodywork. The 999's tubu lar-stee l Verlicchi spaceframe has the same adjustable steering-head angle as befor e, ranging from 23.5 to 24.5 degrees, with Toseland invariably running the wider rake with lots of trail (around IOOmm) in or der to gain stability under bra king - same reason he likes the longer, forged, each motor, at w hich stage yo u have to replace mo re or less everyt hing inside it - if you don't do so, it 's a false eco nomy, because then something w ill break and cost you a lot mo re. The factory 's claims of 1000 km service life are overoptimist ic - but having said that, they have been com pletely honest in giving us the same leve l o f perfor m ance as they have themselves, as you can see by the numbe r of times Haga or McCoy were fastest th rough the speed traps, or Mart in too k Superpole. The only condition is that it' s absolutely necessary to use genuine D ucati parts in follow ing the ma inte nance sched ule - one team blew two motors in half an hour [believed to re fer to Pier-Francesco Chili's polem ic Monza saga!], and we all know they were n't using original Ducati components, which is pro bably what broke!" The 999 F04/RS04's ultra short- stroke, 90-degree des mo V-tw in Test astretta DOHC eight-valve engine measu res 104 by 58.8mm and employs two-ri ng forged Omega pistons m oun ted on ti tani um Pankl conrods, w hich are longe r for 20 04 th an in previous seasons, in order to run lighter pisto ns, aimed at reducing reciprocating w e ight to permit run- ning highe r revs more safely - tho ugh these proved fragile initially, leading to some breakages be fore the prob lem was resolved. The compact Testastretta cylinder heads feature high-lift, belt-dr iven desmodro mic camshafts operating the paired titanium valves - 4 3.5m m inlets and 34 mm exhausts, compared to the 42mm inlet/32mm exhaust diame te rs of th e previous-generation 998 D ucati engine, w hich measured 100 by 63.5m m. That increase in valve sizes, coupled with the ability to rev higher thanks to the shorter stroke (there's a 13,200 rpm rev limiter on the F04, SO Orevs lowe r than in 2003 in the inte rests of longevity but still higher compared to the 12,SOO rpm of the older mot or) explain why Frankie Chili was so eage r to race his hybrid privateer PSG- I bike with the 999 motor in the older 998 frame this season when he found he cou ldn't adapt to the differe nt handling charac- 68 JANUARY 5,2005 • CYCLE NEWS altering the valve ti mi ng. T he car bon -fiber airbox and inlet conventional sw ingarm design now used o n the 999 , op erat- ing an Oh lins shock . This delivers a 20mm· longer, 1440mm w hee lbase compared to the stock 999 in order to load up the front wheel more for extra grip with a 52/48-perce nt front we ight bias compared to the road model's SO/50pe rcent balance. And like the previous 998's tra demark, " m onobraccia" single-sided swi ngar m, it still pivot s in th e engine crankcase as well as the chassis. Front wheel grip has been a key elemen t for all 999 riders this season (hence, for example, Chili's refusal to race the PSG- I team's solitary 999 F04, unless he had no choice), especially with Pirelli tires now fitted rather tha n the Michelins the bike was developed aroun d in both st reet and race guise , wh ich have a flatter pro- file and diffe rent co nstruc t ion compared to the French rubber. The 999 F03's 42m m, pressu rized, TIN-coate d, upside-down Oh lins fo rk with external gas cylinders runs quite a st iff spring to avoid bottoming out unde r heavy braking, with a 52/48-percent we ight distrib ution, wh ich is higher than before for a Ducati V-twin. This is one reason fo r the radiator be ing wrapped arou nd the front cylinde r, since the engine is as far forwa rd in the chassis as possible w ithout the fork tou ching it under the heavy braking needed to sto p a bike weighing right on the twin-cylinde r Superbike we ight limit. On James Tose land's Wor ld Champion bike, that sto pping pow er co m es courtesy of four-p iston , radially-mounted Brembo calipers gripping a pair of 30Smm ventilated stee l discs - the largest diameter auto-cooled rot ors the Italian brake specialists have available. Toseland op ts for these to avoid overheating and subseq uent brake fade , though there 's also a smaller 290mm option that has the side benefit of reduced gyro scop ic effect . There 's a 218mm rear disc (or 200m m option), and Pire lli supplies 16.S-inch ru bber at both e nds, w ith the rea r of the two Marchesini lightweight forged magnesium wheel s employing a 6.2S-inch rim at every tra ck. Of course, the big question now is: Given the remarkable perfor m ance alrea dy extracted from its twin-cylin der eng ine , has the Ducati 999 topped out in terms of race develop men t, as many in the World Super bike paddo ck seem to be lieve ? Can it be improved any furth er in FOS guise to meet the challenge posed by the new generation of IOOOcc Japanese fours it' ll be faced w ith next season? "Look, we all tho ught we were already on the limit tw o years ago , when Hon da beat us for the tttle , and see what has happe ned since the n. how we've increase d the overall performance of the bike?" shrugs Marinelli with a smile. "I think ther e 's still a way to go before the day the twin-cylinder bike is done in Super bike racing - but for sure we know we 're goi ng to have t o w o rk very hard to retain the title in 2005. Just wa tch us try!" ..

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