Cooling issues

The 899, like its bigger brother suffers from insufficient cooling. Not as bad but still. Had the pleasure to ride and race at Mugello and Misano during summer. It was hot (38-40 Celsius), even for Italians, they called the heat wave “Lucifer” so all bikes regardless of brand, except those with race radiators struggled. I had removed the oil pan and re-mounted my fan. After 3 laps, I was seeing 99 degrees on mu display. Not healthy. Even in my native cold Sweden I usually ride with 92 degrees and I have been told that the CPU on the 899 reduces power over 85 degrees to save the engine.

Therefore, I have invested in a kit from JM Race radiators in the Netherlands. My theory is that the heat exchanger doesn’t work well. Its not used for the Panigale V4, so I think Ducati also realized that it was a bad idea. The JM Raceradiator has a more traditional set up with air cold oil radiator.

Racing in Slovakia was great fun. The track was awesome. Modern, well maintained. Good food, gas station in the paddock and fast sweeping corners. The 899 allowed early opening of the throttle out of the turns leading to the 2 main straight and to my surprise I was able to overtake 200 bhp bikes our of turns.  At the end of the straight, a totally different story, of course.

Came home with two 3^rd place’s in the 899 Challenge cup and 10^th place in the Battle of the Europeans total.

Starting to understand the 899 now.

899 tested at Cartagena. Very different bike to ride in full race form. But fun!

Vinyl

Using BikePlast fairings means that the fairings are pretty good as is and I decided to save some money on paint and got a vinyl kit from Vulturbike.com. Good friend Jåke who is a professional on the matter helped out and gave me a 101 on how to work with vinyl, Looks quite good.

Handle bars

Handle bars from Bonamici. Took some fiddling to fit, as always. Looks like I’m bolting on things, but most things require some work well.

Brake adjuster on the left side for easy adjusting while riding

And of course with race switches that are much likely to survive a crash

Belly pan

The belly pan wasn´t that hard to put in place. Very tight, but only two holes needed drilling in the belly pan (forward mount of silencer)

Tank dummy and race saddle

One of the advantages of the 899 is that I finally can get a seating position that works better, and therefore I went for the saddle and the tank extension that will force me to sit further back and be able to hang off better