We decided to manufacture our own gearbox for the 1098/1198 because as stock they’ve proven quite weak. In short, they chew their dogs off! Which means they jump out of gear.
A lot of bikes we’ve seen have used a factory-fit quickshifter; the trouble here is that errors can be made on upshifts on the road (especially in traffic) rather than on track where shifting is much more aggressive and positive.
A gearbox swap is a big job, and an expensive one. So we’ve built a 3 dog ‘box with very similar ratios to a factory Corse item. We’ve employed our own (larger and stronger) dog arrangement – which is well proven and tough – and as we’re not fans of super-finishing for road use we do an hour and a half of deburring in the rumbler, then harden, then a repeat hour thirty in the rumbler (just to clean up anything after the hardening).
By the end each gear is fully ‘stoned’ and wear-hardened. We only use certified EN36 with a really good case hardening and while our gearbox may be a touch heavier than stock, it will stand the test of time…
Used with a quick shift on the road the stock Ducati gearbox can suffer – so we built our own…
