Kath this is perfect for you...

The review is certainly no surprise, as the photos and specifications promised to impress far more than any twin in history...Bravo Ducati, condolences Kath :wink:

 

Hey, no sweat, like I said, I'm happy with my 999 which my riding ability will still be growing into for years to come. And though the 1098 is probably considered more attractive to a wider audience, I still prefer the unique looks of the 999.



I actually think the 1098 is the perfect bike for everyone else who have pooh-poohed Ducatis as pretty but overpriced and over-rated paddock furniture, since now the performance specs AND the price are finally on par with their Japanese counterparts. No more excuses for anyone who was afraid to drop the extra dough to find out what the Italian fuss was all about.



There are some interesting points to note in that linked article, however.



The first is that the author of the article repeatedly makes mention of the fact that the 1098 with OEM rubber has more traction out of corners than the 999. In the accompanying photo, you can see that the 1098 is shod with Pirelli Supercorsas...a DOT race tire. The 999 most frequently came shod with Michelin Pilot Sports as OEM fitment, and in the case of my 999, rolled out of the showroom wearing Pirelli Dragon Evo/Corsas, which had much less traction than my current Pilot Power street tires, and assuredly less than the current crop of Pirelli Supercorsas.



I'm not sure what bike journalist could credibly compare a new bike with DOT race tires as OEM to a bike released (and presumably tested) 4 years ago on OEM street tires with 4 year old tire technology, but it's certainly not a responsible comparison.



The second and third interesting points are the beefing up of the frame/swingarm and the monobloc brakes and attendant braking vibration at high speed. What's going on here?



First on the brakes...monobloc is surely trick, as are thinner, 330mm rotors...but why not spend the extra R&D on eliminating what sounds like either chatter, or a propensity for the oversize discs to warp at the first hard usage? What's up with that?



Second, do we think that the larger cross section frame tubing was a necessity to handle the forces of the extra hp and torque? From this review it sounds like Ducati has gone in the right direction as to maintaining a sweet handling chassis...but is it at the expense of frame that is garbage the first time a rider decides to push those handling limits and crashes on his/her trackday? (think the recent crop of Japanese bikes that are built to such fragile material construction tolerances to keep weight down that one crash or even sometimes driveway tip-over renders major bike components totalled). Boy if we thought Ducatis were expensive to fix before...



Next, in the year 2006, I do take issue with the journalist's disingenuous comments about Ducati electrics. Come on, already. Most recently it was the 999 that sported the superior Magnetti Marelli electrics after years of failing Japanese components on earlier superbike models. Japanese manufacturers are now following suit and some noteworthy in-line 4 race teams are adopting relationships with Magnetti Marelli as a testament to that. To write the article in such a way as to insinuate that the 1098 is the first-adopter of this improvement is irritatingly coy.



Journalistic integrity aside, I will say that the addition of datalogging to the 1098's electronic accesorizing is awesomely, hubristically, and uselessly fantastic! It allows for, no, encourages, an entirely new level of amateur clicker-twisting, knob-turning trouble on an ionic level...what more could we over-privileged, action-fantasy seeking gadget geeks ask for?



I remember at a bike show one year looking at a 60-something year old guy who was seriously talking about acquiring a $5000 data acquistion system for his occasional track day use like he had three heads...what a jerk - had he gone off the deep end? Was he even fast? (in reality, though, I was envying his abundance and prioritizing of disposable income).



But now that it's offered as optional on the base and OEM on the "S" marque of choice, I'm singing a different tune. It makes me believe that the Bologna Factory's R&D team must have the engineers holding focus groups with one or two drug dealers in the back office. "Ah, si, bon giorno, cocaine-a...? Meet-a crack!"



Anyway, jury's still out for me whether this one is that much better (especially given the fact that I still prefer my 999's tame 125hp to the GSXR's 160)...but I would like to see a few converts next year, will enjoy seeing it at the show, and hope to see a few at the track come spring...anyone sign up for theirs yet?



Kath

 

Hello Kath,



Journalistic integrity? In a motorcycle magazine? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

For some reason I recall seeing this as a concept drawing leading up to the unveiling of the 999. Was this an earlier design that was abandoned and brought back for a more main stream acceptance? I don't care for the look of the 999 with the headlights but put on race body work and it looks just great. I just don't care for the stacked headlight treatment on any motorcycle I've seen to date with it.



Kath about your expression of a journalist comparing tires 4 years apart; I find it all to funny every time someone writes about the "new chassis" xxxxx has on their xxx-600-RR that "....you could feel the improvements working." Really! Even the test riders have to test one variable at a time to prove something works and the bike is 80% new and you can tell its the new frame. Wow, the new must be Rossi here. If the journalist wasn't told a thing in a pre-ride engineering PR gloss over they wouldn't know what to say. :roll:



Am I right??? Just curious.

 

my god, I think I'm going to choke on my potato chips...guys, I need a witness here, i think walter just said something that actually made sense! :lol:



p.s. sorry to say, though Walter...the stacked headlight is one of the design elements I like the most about the 999...that and the whole tank to tailsection bit...

 

Speaking of "overpriced and overrated" Italian hardware......

Has Mv lost their minds? Their new $128,000.00, 1100cc machine (complete with Marzocchi forks) makes $65,000.00 Ducati V4 MotoGp replica production (with gas charged Ohlins Superbike forks) bikes look like the bargain of the decade. It 's little more than a breathed on F4 with some prettier pieces. I think with the extra hundred grand over the price of a Senna, I could have done better, and still had enough left over to buy a new 1098 Tri Color Ducati, so I could have my own personal Twin vs Four war........

 

Hello Bob,



I don't know if MV lost it or not. It's so far out of my reach that it's incomprehensable. For some though it's chump change.



Re headlights; Kath and Walt



Dr. Zigmund von Porchenfuss in his acclaimed 1933 study "Verticalli y Illuminati" determined that those that preferred to arrange lights in vertical columns were far more intelligent, openminded and progressive than those that preferred to arrange them horizontally, assuming they put down their pitchforks and torches long enough to arrange them at all. He also observed that the horizontal crowd had a deep seated subconcious desire to return to the time before man walked upright.

 

I have always found it funny as well. My reaction to those types of statements was always "I have either absolutely no feel for anything I ride, or this guy is full of crap." I can't tell you how many times I have listened to friends describe the behavior of tires or suspension changes and thought to myself "I am 2-5 seconds faster, how come you can feel it and I can't?"

 

Hello Papa,



Maybe they were slower because they could feel it and you went faster because you filtered out the irrelevant.



When raceing, I sometimes thought myself into a deadend. The solution often was to just go out and ride the sucker and quit worrying about all the little twitches and slips.



I 'm with you and Walt on magazines though. If we got all the benefits they tried to sell us in the last forty years, our lap times would be approaching zero. I can see it now, 1200 laps in a twenty minute session. Talk about a tire engineers nightmare.

 

Papa....

Joey and I used to laugh while listening to all the riders talking about how the fronts of their machines were pushing and tucking as the rears were stepping out while they were backing it in, when after sandbagging himself into the position of winning a half dozen Amateur championships, Joey admitted that he'd never slid a motorcycle unless he was in the process of falling off of it.

 

Yup, I vividly recall all six times I lit up a rear tire and didn't fall. Some of my friends apparently used to have six such events per session. I have never pushed the front without crashing. Actually, I am not even certain I pushed the front in one of the two low sides I had. Go figure.

 

Papa,



When racing my '77 ss pushing the front was common and unintentional. I used to have nightmares that would wake me up, dreaming that I lost the front in Summit T10. Not fun.

 

Yes, Mike, and they can pry my pitchfork from my cold dead hands... :lol: :lol: :lol:



The MV situation is a bit surreal at the moment...compounded by Eraldo's real-time R&D during last week's racebike, er I mean tire-testing at Daytona. If anyone can do it, I suppose he can, but he's sure got his work cut out over the next few months.



bobby and papa...as far as feeling bike changes, I'm sure there are those of us who aren't as fast as some others yet can still feel the bike "doing things" while riding...in fact, I'd prefer to stay away from those riders who say they get no input at all.



I'm sure you'll agree however, that what separates the men from the boys if you will, is the ability to discern whether that input is a result of the rider's own actions, the bike signaling real limits of adhesion, or a combination of the two...and THEN being able to do something about it...ride around it, modify input, etc.



Bobby you said it perfectly talking about those riders who get a little tire slip or spin-up and claim they're "backing it in". Sometimes the best response is to walk away.



On the flip side, I had a problem come up at Summit Point in October which was a small breakthrough in becoming a better rider. As I was going quicker during one day I started feeling a sort of weaving/bucking coming from the front end in the neutral throttle zones of Turns 1 and 6-7 (carousel). I started thinking there was a problem with either the front or rear rebound being too fast and creating a fore/aft tip. I asked one or two people for their thoughts and a suggestion was made. But the problem was really bugging me because it seemed to be happening at a fairly static state for the bike and I felt this might be a difficult issue to work through with suspension changes.



I had a bit of a hunch and decided to go out the next time with NO changes to see if I could reproduce it. Sure enough, I realized that in going faster, I was becoming a bit tense and holding the bars too tight...it was ME causing the front end weave. After that I adjusted my body position and relaxed my grip, and the weave went away. That accomplishment felt better than any settings/component change I could have made on the bike...plus it was FREE!$$$



Kath

 

Well Kath, it's all relative. I did not mean to imply that I didn't know what the knobs on my motorcycles were for. I have watched a guy replace Computrack settings with mine and go two seconds faster the next time out. And I could tell if I was using Michelins or Dunlops. I wasn't completely clueless. But I definitely did not have your feel (or Pat's) for how my motorcycle was working under me. Most days, I don't think I could tell a Dunlop 207 from a 208 until they started to get worn out. I know people who think they could while going a lot slower. Let's just say I was skeptical.



I just had a reasonably good feel for how fast I could go before things would get scary.

 

I'm with you on all that Papa...I think there are just some people, like you, and Peter for that matter, who take most of what's happening with the bike in stride, and others, like me, who notice every little thing that's going on and try to interperet it (even when I should just let it go).



It's funny...it's all I can do sometimes to sit on my hands and not fiddle with the clickers and settings on my bike, meanwhile, Pete has been riding his Aprilia RS250 for the last season and a half without a steering damper and no complaints!! :!:



Finally though, I'm slowly learning that although there are some things you can actually grab a hold of and make changes to improve your riding, and other things that make you think "well, maybe I shouldn't do THAT again with the throttle, brake, steering, etc.", there are still others that just come with the territory of riding a bike on a performance level.



That comes full circle to your approach of riding 'till it feels scary, I suppose!



In trying to be more in the camp of rolling with whatever the bike does, I will say it's easier to do on the 999 than on the 900SS. The 999 is just so unflappable in its chassis that little things like skipping over the cement transitions at Summit barely upset the bike, it just grabs as soon as it finds regular tarmac and we get on with it. Not to say that you can't be a good rider on an inferior bike, but having a more capable bike definitely aids improvement as a rider, if only because it builds confidence.



Kath

 

I am going to let you in on a secret so ridiculous, I never told anyone. I used to look at the 916/996/998 series and seriously think to myself "these things just look RIGHT. I could probably hang with anyone and never get anywhere near crashing on one of those."



I had absolutely zero logical reason for thinking that: I had a total of maybe one half hour of seat time on 916s, both on highways. I sort of get the same feeling when I look at the 1098. Not so much about the "no-crashing" part (because my brain tells me I definitely have what it takes to crash 160 hp), but about the "I could hang with anyone" part.



The only other bikes that make me feel this way when I look at them are 250 2-strokes. And interestingly enough, I have practically zero experience on those either (other than one session on a borrowed RS250 at Reduc).

 

Papa wrote:

Once upon a time Papa, I think I sent you a review of the 996SPS I rode at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Jean P. and I did the DRA Women's Race School. It was then that the heavens opened up and just about the only thing in my conscious brain was "If there is perfection in sportbikes, this is surely it." The other half was trying to keep my wits about me realizing that Doug Polen and I were having a 30 minute one-on-one track session (even if I did think it was Andy Meklau at the time - whoops!)



Even though I hadn't ridden the variety of superbikes/sportbikes then that I have now, I couldn't help but feel that the 996SPS was The One. From that day on, my sights were set on acquiring one someday, somehow...and when the 999 arrived, I wasn't disappointed.



So your secret is out, but your instincts were dead on. All the non-Ducati owners will say I'm biased, but I say they haven't yet seen the light. :wink:



I didn't think Ducati could do better than the 996SPS for the street, but they did it with the 999. I have full confidence with the 1098...but even if it blows the 999 away the nice thing is that owning any Ducati superbike doesn't leave you wanting...



Kath

 

Much of the confusion about sliding tires comes from the slip angle. All tires as they approach the limits of traction on dry pavement will begin to slip. This is not slideing. It is mainly the distortion of the caseing and tread that cause this. A given point on the tread touches the road at a point further outside of where it did on the previous revolution.



Different tires will have larger or smaller slip angles and enter slip more or less abruptly.



This slip is what riders will misinterperate as slides when those behind see no slide.



Slip is an essential part of a riders feed back. The characteristics of the slip angle are what make one tire more or less "forgiving" than another.