The owner of this 1198 (he posted it from Scotland) sent it in originally with gearbox issues. We pulled the engine and sure enough – it had problems. Now he’s had no worries with it at all in two years of hard track use, but at Portamao at the end of last year the clutch went and he noticed that the gearbox shaft was wandering up and down…
With the engine in bits we found a fully knackered gearbox; the dogs were chewed off (standard Ducati build quality) and the whole thing was essentially scrap. As luck world have it our friends at Moto Rapido had a used Nova gearbox in stock. As the lead times for a new Nova unit were too long we fitted the very serviceable secondhand Nova item, re-shimmed the gearbox and changed the bearings. While we were there we stripped the crank out, cleaned all the sludge traps, re-shelled the crankshaft and added new piston rings and re-seated the valves.
Next up was the clutch. He’d fitted a Sigma clutch using a JCB washer (!) so we machined a new spacer. There are no problems with these clutches but one clutch fits a variety of bikes – it’s the fitter’s job to get the spacers right. Get it wrong, and gearbox bearing destruction will follow…
Once all back together it ran a treat. On the Dyno for an ECU remap we discovered half the wiring loom had melted. So a quick re-wire to the ECU sorted that (and also explained where the misfires he’d felt were coming from). Now make no mistake, this is a tidy bike and made – stock engine with full Termi system and Ducati Performance ECU – 172bhp. And that’s a gentle run because of the engine rebuild. Not bad at all! During the remap we adjusted the fuelling and accelerator pump – that was all it needed as the lambdas were already switched off.
172bhp (while running in) ain’t bad at all. Ready for more track action after a full engine rebuild, this tidy 1198 floats our boat…
