This Ducati Hypermotard comes with quite an interesting back story. It came to us fitted with the long range fuel tank, and as part of that kit you have to lose the stock airbox setup, and K&N filters are included. So this bike had ‘open’ breathing, but standard exhausts, which made it very difficult to fuel absolutely perfectly. Obviously, it’s normally the other way round – open pipes with restrictive breathing.
The owner used his bike mainly around London – and we’re finding this more and more – and complained that it just wasn’t user-friendly, and snatchy in traffic. Fitting the long range tank had just made it worse. We started by looking at the fuelling as it was; and from there decided that it’d need a lot more fuel. The problem with extra fuel at the bottom-end is that it will bog, usually when rolling off, then on, the throttle. Even though the fuelling will be correct for the open airbox, it won’t be ‘clean’.
So with this bike it became a game of compromise, between over and under fuelling it. We talked it through with the owner – he’s off to the Pyrenees with it shortly – and we’ll probably fit some cans to it, and remap the ECU again, at a later date. We’ll keep you posted…
Long range tank does away with the airbox – good for breathing, bad for fuelling...
