Welcome to my Racing page!

As the 2005 season is now over and I've already started the 2006 season, I thought it was about time that I updated the website and typed up everything that has happened since we finished racing last year. If you're not familiar with what happened last year, have a look at the 2005 Season page and then drop back here to read the latest stuff.

Here's the Photo Gallery of the 600-620 hybrid that we have built for 2006. The gallery covers quite a few months as we stripped the 600 down then rebuilt it back up with the later 620 engine in it. When I get round to it, I'll do some wordy bits about the rebuild, but for now you'll just have to look at the pictures.

Last Updated: 25th October 2006: Round 4 Race Report added (at last!)

Dec 2005 ^^
So a quick recap of the 2005 season - I started out with a 600SS that I bought for 1200 quid off ebay, and put the Ducati Performance 680 kit into it, which replaced the barrels and pistons and took the engine from 583cc out to 674cc. The idea was to allow the older bikes to be more competitive with the newer 620 bikes ( which are 618cc and Fuel Injected) and also a cheap alternative to paying £3K and up for an FI bike, only to sling it down the track. We weren't allowed to do any head work, or other engine tuning, as the thinking (by certain people) was that this would then give the 680 bike an advantage instead. This, however, turned out to be complete crap as the 680 bikes were still a good 10 bhp down on the 620 bikes. We tried running with Keihin Flat Side carbs, which ended up making the bike worse (although some dyno time should have been done to set it up right) and basically I spent the whole year playing catch up. Fast-Forward a bit to the prep of 2006 and more than one person who had dyno'ed their 674cc bike at 54bhp and then returned it to 583cc for the 2006 season and had it dyno'ed again after and got ... 54bhp!

Also at the end of 2005, the club made the decision, based upon expected numbers for 2006, that we would have enough entrants to run two classes - one for the 620 (618cc FI) bikes and the other for the 600 (583cc carbed) bikes. The rules could then be tightened further to basically get rid of the 674cc "big bore" bikes and stick with the standard engines. Again the focus of the series is that this is a novice race series and little, or no, work should be done on the bikes. The 674cc bikes just made things more complicated and so it was agreed that these would be dropped. We (the 674cc owners) were consulted on this and it had our backing as it was obvious that these were just a waste of money, within the 2005 rules, and that we were all either returning the bike to a 600 or moving to a 620 bike for 2006 anyway.

Back at the Brands round in 2005, I had a chat with Charlotte and Alan Knight about their 620 engine. They had started out with a very cheap 600 Monster and bought the big-bore kit for it to make it competitive, but when they took the engine apart the kit didn't fit! Some of the very last 583cc engines had been changed so this kit was no good, but they ended up racing it as a 583cc machine - and all credit to the riding skills of Andy Johnson as he put it on the podium at one meeting! They then had the opportunity to buy a 620 engine, which they then put into their 600 frame. Then later in the season, another opportunity came to buy an almost new 620 bike which had raced in the series. They bought this and ran the two bikes until the end of the season. With the series set to split for 2006, it made sense to return the original bike back to 583cc and run it in one class, while they could run the other bike in the other class, and this left them with a 620 engine ... which is where I came in.

So in December, having started my new job and spent some time working in San Francisco, I thought that I really better get round to start prepping the bike for the 2006 season. We had a rough idea that the engine would fit - Ducati are too lazy to redesign anything so most of the 2-Valve engines are interchangeable! - and the engine came complete with a wiring loom, the injectors and airbox and everything else it needed, so it was just a case of slotting it into my 600SS frame. The first thing to do would be to strip down the bike completely to just a frame so we could see if the 620 engine would fit. While we had just the frame, we thought it would be good to get it Powder Coated as it was looking quite tired and a couple of spills of acid from the battery where it had a little lay down at some of the tracks hadn't done it much good. Myself and Mark, my pit bitch and co-conspirator in all things Desmo Due, had long arguments about which colour it should be but we ended up with black. Ducati have a tradition of painting their racing frames red (see the latest "R" bikes and the Desmosedici MotoGP bike) but I'd seen a picture of the new Monster S4R in silver with a black frame and thought it looked the nuts.

With the bike down to just a frame, I laid it over the engine and, thank the Lord, it fitted quite nicely. Alan had worked out that the later engines used larger engine mounting bolts (10mm instead of 8mm) but that you could buy some steel tubing from B&Q for around a fiver a metre, which would sleeve the bolts perfectly, so you could use the original mounting bolts and not drill your frame. These were left in the engine when I bought it, so that was one less thing to worry about. Ducati had changed the front mounting, so instead of using two bolts either side that bolted into the engine, it was now one bolt through the engine, the same as the rear. Mark had a collection of engine mounting bolts and we found a 900SS rear engine mounting bolt was the perfect size, so this went on with a nut each side.

A frame and engine, yesterday. Note the expensive (Ducati OEM) engine
stand, and box of Pampers Active Fit for those "Oh Sh*t" moments.

There had been some concerns about a cross member getting in the way of the engine, and Alan had said that this could easily be cut out and ignored - this was a 150bhp frame with a 50bhp engine after all! However, on laying up the frame the cross member didn't get in the way at all, so it must have been later frames, or maybe because ours was a 600SS frame and not a Monster frame? Whatever, it wasn't a problem!

Jan 2006 ^^
Luckily Mark works for a company that builds race cars so he has access to all sorts of high-tech machinary and gadgets for us to use. The head bearings were taken out of the frame before it was powder coated, and when it came back Mark used their hydraulic press to put new ones in. He also checked the bearings and found that Ducati wanted about £25 each for them, but that they were the exact same as the wheel bearings from some Fiat, which were sold at less than £20 for the pair. I'll add the exact part details for you, just in case you want to know! He also got one of the guys there to weld up the fairing mount that snapped and was held in place with some thick copper wire and a bit of solder. This too got powder coated so it all looked nice when it came back.

We also took the opportunity to clean a lot of parts on the bike while it was in pieces. The engine wasn't in brilliant condition and it was suffering from the usual Ducati Flaky Paint syndrome. I cleaned it as best I could - a couple of cans of engine degreaser, lots of brake cleaner and lots of rubbing with a toothbrush and then even a steam clean - so at least it looked better then the old engine! We also had a big box of stainless fasteners, so the idea was to replace the old corroded ones with stainless as we went too. The top yoke was also a real mess, with flaky paint and key scratches, so that got dumped into an acid bath to take all of the old paint off it. Once clean, it was then given a quick spray over with some clear laquer and it looks better than new. At least until the first crash anyway!

The top yoke after a good clean.

The next thing on the list to sort with the new engine was the fuel pump. While the engine came with all the FI system, we still needed to provide it with 3.0 bar of fuel into the hoses. This is obviously way more than the carb fuel pump can supply, so we needed to replace the pump. The obvious answer would have been to buy the Ducati OEM pump from the FI bike as it turns out that this is the same size as the carb pump, but that would (a) be too easy and (b) cost lots at Ducati OEM prices. So Mark had a look around and found that the fuel pumps on Triumphs were a very close match - in fact they were probably made at the same factory. We bought a couple from ebay for less than £15 each and dismantled the assembly to strip out the pump. Mark connected the wiring up inside the tank and sealed it all up, and stuck it onto the pressure tester - bang on 3 bar! The rest of the parts from the Triumph assembly would go into the spares box - it even uses the same 3 bar pressure regulator and same sized fuel filters. It also had some nice quick-disconnect fittings on there too which may end up back on ebay!

Feb 2006 ^^
Just in case I though things were going well at this point, I had been in San Fran for two weeks, in Paris (France) for a couple of days and then scheduled for another trip to San Fran again in March. There had also been a vote for when the racers would like the series to start, with the options being Cadwell in March or Brands Hatch in April. Strangely, Cadwell in March won the vote so we were now getting quite pressed for time to complete the bike. We had most things sorted, but one thing we were missing was the exhaust. I started buying up some cheap Ducati exhaust parts from 748/916s to use the lovely 45mm pipe with various bends so that we could make our own system up. The only snag was that neither of us could weld, and even if we did we didn't have any welding gear. Mark did have some 900SS downpipes though, and a quick offer-up showed that these would fit the 620 engine (I told you Ducati were too lazy to change things!) so at least that solved part of our problem.

Mark also offered to lend me one of his alloy swingarms that he had squirrelled away as part of his 900SS project, which is where all these parts were coming from, so we again offered this up and it too fitted without problem. We ordered all the parts we would need to fit it - some more swingarm shims, the chain adjusting blocks and the brake pin - and then carried on with worrying about fitting the engine in, as someone had mentioned that the battery may not fit under the tank...

Finally the frame came back from the powder coaters, and boy did it look good! Mark has lent me his EasyRiser bike stand so that we can work on the bike at a comfortable level, rather than kneeling on the floor. This thing is a god send as it makes putting things back together so much easier. You need to have a side-stand so we bolted one on from Mark's spares box(es) for the time being, and then it bolts into the engine too. From there it's not going anywhere so you can build it right up on the stand without fear of it toppling over.

The newly coated frame on the newly cleaned engine.
Take a good look as it might not look this good for too long!

After a couple of evenings and weekend sessions in the garage, the bike was built up enough to turn the engine over, and it did! We had to rob the starter relay off the old bike, along with a couple of the cables (more Ducati laziness!) but I did have to buy a new engine stop / starter switch pod as this has a different connector on the FI engines. Luckily though, Ducati were lazy here too so the unit is the same from 2-Valve to 4-Valve engines, so I got one for £12.95 from ebay from a 748 or similar. We also fitted the oil cooler from the old engine and then found that there was no oil diverter plate behind the oil filter, so the cooler probably wasn't working at all on that engine! One oil diverter plate later and our engine was all sorted.

We were wondering about what to do with the throttle, as the unit from the FI bike is different to the carb bike, as it only uses one cable compared to the carb's two. You may remember that I had sticky-throttle problems in 2005 which were traced back to a duff closing cable, so we had simply removed it and allowed the (fairly hefty) spring on the butterflies to close the throttle. I put the assembly onto the bike and checked the cable, but it was slightly too short (not enough free cable) to fully close the throttle, even with both adjusters wound right in. Being a tight git, I pulled the cap off the end of the cable then set about trimming back the outer sleeve with a pair of side cutters to free up some more cable. Five minutes later and there was even enough slack to wind the adjuster out a bit!

Quite a lot done, but still a lot more to do!

Next up were the brakes. Mark had a pair of very tasty Brembo racing radial master cylinders which he was saving for Project 900SS - which was now being rapidly diminished by me robbing most of the parts from it - so these went onto the bike as well. Mark made up a new braided clutch hose to replace the original rubber one from the old bike, but typically all of the banjo bolts we had were too long for the clutch master cylinder! No problem though as Mark got one turned down slightly by a friendly colleague, so we were back in business. We needed some reservoirs for these though, so in the interests of making everything as light as possible, we opted for the smallest ones we could get which were 15cc, and I think they're the same size as the rear brake resevoir. Now all we needed was somewhere to mount them, so I came up with the idea of a small bracket where the ignition barrel had been (we'd again removed this for a simple on/off switch) in true racer stylee. As the resevoirs were so small, they didn't foul on anything and looked pretty trick too. I also re-used the carbon-fibre dash mount from last year, but had to enlarge the hole to take the bigger electronic rev-counter for the FI bike. This incorporated the oil light, but I left the one on the dash in place just in case we found another use - low fuel maybe? Idiot light? Nah, it'd be on all the time...

Last year we had been using the original Ducati OEM battery out of the 600SS, which is a YB16AL-A2 battery. It's obviously a few years old and looking rather crusty now, and after a couple of spills - both in the "laying the bike down" and "acid from the battery" sense - it was wise to replace it. The 620 bikes switched to using a YT12B-BS, which is quite a bit smaller. In fact, the YB16 weighs 11.5 lbs and the smaller weighs 7.5 lbs, so that's quite a decent weight saving just by replacing the battery and it will help the performance. As we've got a stripped down wiring loom, we're not concerned about the battery not being able to start the bike after the race (part of the DD rules) as it won't really be running anything and we checked that the circuit was charging. So we needed to find a new smaller battery but, as usual, didn't fancy paying Ducati prices for a new one - another DD rule is that it has to be OEM. Mark called Jim at BikeEnders, the renowned Ducati breakers in Romford, and he said the he did indeed have some batteries, so he could come down and have a look. When Mark got there, Jim explained that he was charged a pound for each battery he wanted to dispose of, so instead of paying cash to get rid of them, he just stacked them neatly in the corner. In that corner were seven YT12 batteries of unknown age and condition, and Mark struck a deal to take the lot for a tenner. Taking them back to his workshop, he put each one on the "heavy duty optimate" for a deep discharge and charge cycle (or two) to recondition the batteries. A couple of days later Mark arrived with a tray of all seven batteries - each one had been brought back to life and only one had needed a second cycle before it too was in A1 condition. Anyone want to buy a battery?

The problem of the exhausts still hadn't been solved until a nice set of Ducati Performance Carbon cans from a 900SS appeared on ebay. I watched the auction for the full duration, knowing that these retail well into the £600-700 mark and was prepared to put in quite a high bid as this would solve all our problems. Those final moments of the auction played out in my favour with a surprisingly low finish price of just over £120 - a real bargain again from ebay. These arrived after a couple of days and were duly fitted, and at last we were able to run the bike up properly, having just turned it over a couple of times to make sure all the electrics were working fine. Sure enough, it fired up on our reconditioned battery and emitted a lovely low, deep rumble - so much deeper than the previous engine and system. We both grinned like loons as it finally felt like we were getting somewhere!

March 2006 ^^
With the first race less than four weeks away, we at least had a running bike. I was off to San Francisco again, only for a week this time, and the final parts of the puzzle were the tyres, fairing and some dyno and track time. At the very last race meeting of last season, I won the draw for a free pair of Pirelli Diablo tyres (just my luck!) and had decided to keep the voucher until I needed it in 2006. As I'd run with the same tyres all last season (I kid you not!) we would definitely need some for the first round, so I got in touch with the number on the voucher. They didn't have any in stock, so they said, but I would need to send the voucher in and they would order some from Pirelli and then send them out. This was all done before I flew to the US, so I was hoping for a pair of tyres to be there when I got back.

Typically, the tyres didn't arrive while I was away, so when I got back to work the next week I phoned them to see what was going on and they were still waiting on stock from Pirelli. With only two weeks to go to our first race, I was getting a bit worried, but was fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy another pair of tyres at the meeting if the new ones hadn't arrived and run with them, then use the free pair later in the season. By chance, I had to speak to Chris Bushell, one of the DSC's DD race committee, about my entry to the Assen round of the DD season and I mentioned the tyres, or lack of. Chris went ballistic as it turned out that there were others who were in the same position, and he had already been on the phone to the suppliers after Pirelli had told Chris they had sent more than enough stock out that week to cover the free tyres. Some people had even sent their vouchers in after they won in October last year and had still not received tyres! Chris said he'd get back onto them and hopefully it would all get sorted in time for the first race.

Back in the garage, we had the new fairing which I bought from the same place as last year but had sent me the road version of the seat unit rather than the race. This really peeved me off as they now deal exclusively on ebay, with quite steep postage charges per item. As I'd bought a complete set - two sides, front fairing and a seat unit - they charged me postage for each item and, you guessed it, they all turned up together. The postal charge alone was over £70 in total, then they sent the wrong seat and asked me to send it back, at my own cost, for a replacement! Ok, this may be an overreaction on my part (was it?) but I just decided to leave it as the wrong seat unit was better than no seat unit. Time was short and we had a perfectly useable, although not cosmetically perfect, set from last year that would do for the first round - we needed to concentrate on getting the bike ready to race rather than things that weren't essential. Anyway, the new fairing would still need painting and that would take a couple of weeks, so it would have to wait until later.

With just over one week to go and the bike all finished, except for the new fairings and new tyres, it was obvious that I couldn't fit in a trackday, so we decided that a dyno session would be more beneficial to make sure that the bike was running properly. We arranged a day with Mitch the Mechanic down at TecMoto to come with us to Gibsons, not far up the road, and run it on their dyno. The bike had a Power Commander fitted and Alan had already spent hours on the dyno getting it set up perfectly, and had told me explicitly "Don't touch it!". However, we still needed to make sure it was running right, and we were using a different exhaust system to Alan, so a dyno run would tell us if it was running right, how much power it was putting out and how much difference the standard 900SS exhaust and DP cans made to the MHP custom system Alan was using. We slung the wheels onto the bike, with the original tyres still on them, back onto the bike and loaded it onto the trailer ready to take it to the dyno.

We got down to TecMoto at around lunchtime and Mitch jumped in his car to lead the way to the dyno at Gibsons, which was only up the road from TecMoto. When we arrived, they had to shuffle a few bikes around inside to clear a path to the dyno! The place was stacked with mostly two-stroke Yamahas in various kinds of distress, some racing and some road, and even one ex-GP bike in a glass cabinet. The dyno is in a little shed inside their warehouse, with big extraction pipes leading outside to save you gassing yourself. We got the bike onto the dyno and strapped down, then set about trying to get the current map off the Power Commander, as we didn't have a saved copy of it anywhere. We first tried Mitch's laptop with the software, but it couldn't find the Power Commander at all. So we swapped leads and Mitch fiddled with the settings, but still no luck. Mark had brought his laptop along with the software on, so we plugged his in and it found the Power Commander and read all the revs and settings, but just kept coming up with "Incompatible Version" each time we tried to save the current map. So we tried swapping leads and fiddling with settings but still no joy. Finally we tried the Gibsons laptop and this connected to the Power Commander and read the settings but it too wouldn't save the current map but instead came up with the same "incompatible version" error we had before. So we gave up and just decided to run the bloody dyno anyway.

As they started the bike, myself and Mark started backing out of the door. The operator looked a bit worried by this in a "what do they know" way, but we reassured him that it should hold together. "Should?" was the look on his face. "How far do you run it up?" he asked. "Until the rev limiter comes in!" was my reply and he acknowledged it with a grin. He ran it through the gears and then whacked it open from idle three times, which were the actual dyno runs so I later found out. The bike sounded a little bit too throaty, like it wasn't fuelled right, but Mitch gave us "two thumbs up" from what he saw as he had stayed in the dyno room with the bike. Looking at the runs, they said it was spot on. "Don't touch it!" were his actual words, echoing what Alan had told us. They had run another 620SS racer on the dyno the week before and they overlaid his graph with mine - I was up by 3bhp throughout the curve and with no big hole at 6k rpm either (with around 8bhp difference) which he said they had tried so many things to get rid of but just couldn't, so I was quite chuffed. As it turned out, we'd lost less than one bhp compared to the original graph that came with the engine from Alan's runs on the dyno, and you could probably put that down to dyno calibration. The final figure is 62.5bhp at the rear wheel with one very flat torque curve. It's not going to set the world alight, but that's 20% more power than last year! All I need now are some tyres.

Luckily for me, just as I was about to get shouty on the phone after another day gone by without any tyres, the wife sent me a text message to say that I had two black hoops sitting at home. At fucking last. There was now only a couple of days to go before Cadwell, and the only chance I would have to get the tyres changed would be the saturday before the race and that meant no time for scrubbing them in. Oh joy - straight out at Cadwell on new tyres on a new bike for the first time in months and it was bound to be wet, as always. Still, I took confidence in the fact that the bike was running 100% and I'd have new tyres so it would all be down to me. In the evening I removed the wheels, using my patented "ratchet strap over a beam in the garage" method to get the front wheel off the ground, and took the precaution of taking the disks off the wheels too so they didn't get fucked up by the monkeys changing the tyres.

On saturday morning I loaded the wheels, new tyres and the kids into the car and set off for the local tyre place. They had supplied the tyres last year at an ok-ish price when you'd taken into account the fitting, so I had no problem in going back there despite the fact it's opposite Chelmsford Prison and I'm sure they get a couple of lags in at the weekend to work for them on the cheap. They were busy (as usual) even though it was just gone 9am and I could wait if I wanted, but I said it would be better if I came back in an hour what with the kids and everything - you may remember what happened to the BMW last time I left them in it (see the report from Round 2 in 2005 if you don't...) - so we headed off to Sainsburys to get the wife a Mother's Day card for sunday (she was obviously ecstatic that I would be away) and a box of chocs, and maybe sneak in a brekkie at the cafe as well.

Inside Sainsburys we grabbed the wife a nice bunch of flowers and had them wrapped, got a card from the kids and a CD and a nice gift bag (saves wrapping!) and headed to the checkout. Just as we'd paid, I heard a voice behind me say "Oi, aren't you supposed to be racing this weekend?" and turned round to find fellow Essex dweller and DD racer Dickie right behind me! We said hello as we headed to the cafe, as he ordered the big breakfast (that's right mate, you pile the weight on!) and the girls chose a juice and a treat each. We chatted about the racing and Dickie said he'd let me know when he left so we could drive up to Cadwell together as he only lives round the corner. The girls scribbled in the card and I dropped the CD into the bag, so we were now sorted for Mother's Day and it was also time to head back and pick up the wheels.

Back at the tyre place, they'd swapped the tyres over and I did a quick check to make sure they were the right way round - a friend once discovered that the rear wheel on her Trumpet had it's tyre fitted the wrong way round whilst we were in the wilds of France - and they'd even left the old tyres out for me as instructed. These had plenty of tread left in the middle and would make ideal road tyres for one of Mark's bikes, so he had claimed them. I loaded them all into the boot, not remembering how the hell I got it all in there on the way over and standing there looking like an idiot while I tried to work it all out, and then headed home.

It wasn't long before Mark turned up with the works van, so we set about getting the wheels back onto the bike and finishing off all the fiddly little things to get ready for Cadwell before packing the van and heading off. At this point I traditionally turn the "random stream of consciousness" into the race report, so once that's written it will appear right here:

Race Report 1 - Cadwell Park - 26th March 2005 ^^
Race Report from Round 1 is now online.

April 2005 ^^
After the results at Cadwell, and with four weeks to go until the second round at Brands Hatch, I now have time to fit the new set of fairing that I'd bought for this season. It took me a couple of hours out in the garage to do as I had to drill all the holes for the fasteners, cut out the side fairings slightly to accomodate the clip-ons, and so on. Luckily I used the old fairing panels as a template for the cut-outs, as they laid right over the top and I marked them with a pencil! Unfortunately, the batteries on my jigsaw no longer seem to be working, so I couldn't cut the panels but instead had to drill loads of holes along the line then get a junior hacksaw in to cut the panel out before filing it down with a hand file to get a nice clean finish. This time round I've spent a lot more time getting all the edges nice and clean, so hopefully it will look good when it's all painted up. The paint is being done by Chris at Essex County Choppers who also owns TecMoto who are my sponsors.

When I dropped the panels down to Chris, we had a chat about how I wanted them to look. I said that I liked the plain silver, but he moaned that it was too bland and that I needed a design to make it stand out. He then started showing me pictures of all these lairy designs, but I tried to stand my ground on plain silver! I said I didn't mind if he did something with a design (as he was painting them for me, after all!) but as long as "it's not neon pink" then I don't mind. Chris laughed. I'm sure it was an evil laugh, but we'll see...

After just a week, Chris has phoned to say that the panels are done. He said "Bring sunglasses". I bet the fucker has painted them pink...

OH MY GOD! It looks like a proper race bike!
{click here for bigger pic}

As you can see, Chris has done a superb job with the fairings, and it's far better than I ever thought it would be! It looks fantastic, and just like a proper race bike now! All of the logos have been lacquered in, and all I had to do was put on my race numbers and Dave's IQ 18 Films stickers that I also run as a sponsor. I've put the club stickers on, at the bottom on the black piece, as we're supposed to run these too. The black section at the bottom fits in with the bellypan so well! Chris said I should have taken the tank too, but I didn't have time to sort it out, so I'll take that after Brands or Assen, depending on time as these two are close together.

Those more observant readers among you (the anoraks!) may also notice that I've changed my brake disks since Cadwell. This was done for no other reason that these disks are from later Ducatis, 2000+, and are about 400g lighter per disk. That's an 800g saving on the front wheel, and as it's unsprung weight it should make quite a difference overall. Not that I'll notice as I'll be too busy looking at that sweet fairing!

Time to get the bike on the trailer and head off for Brands. Report soon...

Race Report 2 - Brands Hatch - 23rd April 2005 ^^
Race Report from Round 2 is now online.

Race Report 3 - Assen, 5th-7th May 2006 ^^
Race Report from Round 3 is now online.

Race Report 4 - Castle Combe, 10th-11th June 2006 ^^
Race Report from Round 4 is now online.

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