Saturday, March 31, 2012

Motorcycle Track Days - Finished Project

Here are photos of the finished track bike project. I'm in Decatur, TX as I type this and I'll be on the race track all day tomorrow. :-)

Here is the bike with the street setup...

Here is the bike with the track setup...

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Motorcycle Track Days - Prepping the Bike (continued)

After painting and installing everything on the bike, I just really didn't like the way the OEM half fairings look (no offense to those that like the half fairings on the newer Supersport bikes, they just don't look as good as the pre-1999 half fairings in my opinion). I kinda like the way the newer Supersports look with only the upper headlight fairings, but from the side it looks like something is missing and the bottom of the upper fairings sit several inches higher than the bottom of the tail fairings, which doesn't look aesthetically pleasing to me. I decided to fabricate some small fairing "winglets" that would install at the bottom of the upper fairings to give it a finished look and they would sit slightly lower than the bottom of the tail fairings when viewed from the side. I made a paper template of the shape I wanted and transferred the pattern to some 1/8 inch thick ABS plastic sheet that I ordered from Parts Express for only $8. Once I got two winglets cut out, I used a heat gun to form curves on both ends so that they would match the contour of the upper fairings. When installed they look similar to the Ducati Kamna super small race half-fairing, but at a fraction of the cost.
With the new custom half-naked look, I still felt like something was missing and I've never seen a full belly pan on a half-naked Supersport, so I ordered one from AirTech Streamling. When the belly pan came in, I trimmed it to fit the bike, fabricated some brackets to secure it to the bottom of the engine, and painted it once it was completely mocked up.

Here are the brackets I made along with close-ups of the belly pan mounted to the bike...

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Motorcycle Track Days - Prepping the Bike

I've been steadily prepping the 2001 Ducati 900 Supersport for the track and I have a few updates...

Since the headlight and taillight aren't used at the track, I removed them from the bike and fabricated a headlight blank out of some thin aluminum sheet that I picked up from a local hardware store to cover the headlight opening and fabricated a bracket to hold my old unused OEM taillight lens in place in the tail. I covered both pieces with black vinyl tape rather than the typical blue painter's tape so they would blend in with the paint. I can easily remove the blanks and reinstall the headlight and taillight to legally ride the bike on the street if I need to sort out any mechanical or electrical issues without having to change everything back to the street fairings.

I want to use my GoPro HD camera at the track, so I fabricated a simple gas tank mount for it out of 2mm thick aluminum plate. The mount uses three of the gas cap bolt holes and positions the camera in a great spot for capturing on-bike video without getting in my way when I'm riding. There is also a small tether line in case the 3M adhesive pad fails.

Here is the view from the camera on the gas tank mount...

Stay tuned for more updates...