Now this Ducati Hyperstrada completely passed us by as a model – and it’s been replaced by a larger capacity version – but it’s somewhere less hardcore than a Hypermotard (you can fit panniers to it) and a bit livelier than a Multistrada…
And a nice looking bike it is, although a bit too sat over the front wheel for us. Anyway, it was in for an ECU remap at 20,000 miles old (and in amazing condition for such a lot of miles in so short a time). The owner, an ex-racer and No Limits track day instructor is obviously a fastidious chap and was worried about the glitch he was feeling in the power delivery, and wasn’t sure if it was to do with the pipe he’d fitted.
Now we’ve had this before with a lot of Ducatis. It seems around 5,800rpm – and we can watch it on the Dyno – there’s a moment where the harmonics change within the engine, momentarily knocking the crank sensor out. It doesn’t happen all the time, just now and then for a split second loss of signal.
On the road it’s not that noticeable, almost like a slight quick shift. We can address this problem quite easily if the fuelling’s lean, as the engine feels much sharper. More fuel reduces this effect and gives the delivery a bit more ‘thud’. This bike was returning 65mpg, and its owner is not someone to hang about, so that tells you how short of fuel it was…
We sorted that and turned off all of the emissions interference. One thing that did annoy us is that the fly-by-wire map is compromised by the sh*t fly-by-wire throttle which feels like it’s connected to someone else’s bike – in Poland! Unless you’re nailing it the throttle doesn’t know what to do. It’d be easy to blame poor servicing but this bike has been perfectly maintained by very good people.
We did a TPS and parameters reset just to make sure, but other than the TBW gripe out on the road the engine felt good, like any detuned big engine does!
We hadn’t even heard of one of these, but the Hyperstrada’s now on our like list – after we’ve ECU remapped it, of course.
