Bimota Forum

[hindsight]

[Weed]

[Weed]

When the VDue arrived, I thought I had maybe 1 of 2 or 3 in Aus. It wasn’t until I was put in touch with Trev45 by Piero. I found out then that Trev is the man, especially when it comes to VDues in Aus as he has the odd 1 or 5 & knows the location of probably all the VDues here plus has built as few from the ground up.
Trev has been a big help in both advice and problem solving when we have stuffed things up. It is a pity he is 2,500 miles away from me as the project would have progressed at a faster pace. He also put me in contact with Guido the Vue man in Germany.

My mate Glen is the local MoTec guru who built the EFI loom and set up the ECU. A bit of luck came our way when we found an article by a guy who fitted a MoTec unit to a Vdue in 2013. Glen got in contact with him & he was able to help us out with a base map & also pointed out some issues with the original system that needed to be addressed.

The original plan was to fit Lambda sensors, a quick shifter, electronic controlled oil pump & power valves. I thought that would be enough as the ECU had limited data logging as well.


After many months we were ready to start her up & that didn’t go all that well to not put a to finer point on it. Neither Glen or myself were experts on the seemingly simple but complicated workings of a 2 stroke motor let alone a direct injected one. I thought I Knew a bit but rapidly found out I knew fuck all. Even after 9 years it is still all a mystery when you add in all the variables such as injector timing, power valve settings, expansion chambers, Lambda, EGT etc.

The connector between the stepper motor & the oil pump



We couldn’t find any info on what Lambda readings 2 strokes ran so it was all a guessing game which over the years only became a slightly less of a guessing game.

For some reason the map from the guy who originally put a MoTec on the VDue did not work very well & extensive modifications had to be made to get it running well enough to go around the block.
To help with the basic low speed tuning we employed the cunning plan of mounting the lap top onto the fuel tank. Tried it once & gave that idea away.



Glen finally talked me into mounting a MoTec ADL (data logger ) in place of the original instruments, a GPS receiver so as to identify where problems were occurring & then look at the data at that location & finally EGTs.

[Weed]

Back to the track bike.
I fitted the built up motor, Jolly Moto exhaust and seat base. This was done at a leisurely pace as after a few months I was still waiting for the guy to finish the wheels I had originally planned for the project. In hind sight it would have been far quicker to box then up & send them off to the guy in England to sort out but that didn’t happen.














At this stage it was also the time to work out what we wanted to include electronic wise in the build so my mate could start making the wiring loom.
Apart from the oil pump controller, we decided to fit a ride by wire throttle, M800 MoTec ECU, MoTec C185 dash/ data logger, suspension potentiometers, traction control, quick shift & auto blip gear change load cell, fuel pressure, Lambdas, EGTs & handle bar switches, 2 button on the right & 5 button on the left.

Electronic Throttle drive motor from Bike Sport Developments in Britain



Fuel Pressure module



Another mate who is a top fabricator made a mounting base for the dash, ECU and other ancillary parts as well as the exhaust mounts.





Guido made me a fuel tank but he had to modify it to accept the fuel pump. He tried to talk me out of going with the direct injected motor & run carbies instead, but being pig headed me, I wanted to stay with the direct injected system.

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[Gavin944888]

Weed....some very nice work on this bike....and THAT tank!

Guido is a top bloke and was instrumental in setting up my V Due engined proj3ct

Any way.....nice project

Thanks
Gavin
_________________
On an Island in the River Thames!

Cagiva Elefant 888/955 & adventure sidecar
Cagiva Elefant 999r engined
Cagiva BIMOTA Motard Concept
BIMOTA DB9 (with DB11 rear-end)
BIMOTA DB7-11 VLX MULE (build coming to an end)
BIMOTA DB11 VLX Supercharger

[Weed]

Thanks Gav. Much appreciated

[Weed]

Probably got things out of order as far as photos & sequence of events here but such is life.

I gave the barrels & pistons to a local engine builder who has done all of the work on our race motors when we were playing in that sphere. Ray has a great reputation locally for both his 2 & 4 stroke engine work. He blended the ports & piston skirts. I didn’t want to go to far on this motor as I have a third motor that will have more work done to it and fit to the bike after we have come up with a satisfactory engine map for the standard motor. Being standard though it is still fitted with Guido’s heads & the Jolly Moto chambers.

We fitted larger injectors as the road bike was getting close to the limit of the standard injectors & cleaned up & blended the Walbro throttle body.

The steering head was machined & taper roller bearings fitted to it along with the IMA triple clamps. I don’t know if there was any advantage to changing out the bearings as there are 2 schools of thought on this & both are right.

I bought a master cylinder, set of front brake callipers & dry breaks for the front end so we could continue this part of the build while waiting on the the return of the mag wheels I was getting checked out.





As a temporary measure I fitted a Ducati 1098 front wheel so as to machine up the axle nut & fit a 916 Ti axle that I had. All that worked out ok.

Being positive that we were going to make more power out of this thing, I got a new radiator fabricated that was slightly bigger than the original as well as being of a more efficient design. We decided to stick with the electric fan for the time being as in true track conditions it should not be needed. From the photo you can see they made a bit of a stuff up with the fan mounts but Clyde sorted that out





I decided not to use the original spare fairing set I have on the bike & found a set of race fairings in Italy from Motoflash. The fairing set was cheap enough but they wanted to gouge me on the freight. A member on here (Bimoto) came to the rescue here was was able to get the fairing set to me for a reasonable cost. Much appreciated mate. When they arrived we had to modify the belly pan slightly so as to not clash with the exhaust system.







As well as the fuel tank, Guido sent me a beautiful set of rear sets to use. Lovely work.





The bike now went back to Clydes to have all the brackets etc made for the fairing. The front fairing bracket was made to fit the majority of the electronics we planned to have on the bike.

[Bud977]

Great reading. I look forward to your future installments.

[Weed]

Cheers Bud. A few more episodes left yet

[Weed]

Well after over a year I finally got sick & tied of waiting for the Marvic wheels to be refurbished so off to BST for a set of their wheels. Sometimes good decisions are forced onto us by circumstance as the BST’s are a gorgeous set of wheels.
Another mate machined up a Ti axle for the rear wheel as it is a 25mm unit as opposed to a 20mm unit on the original Vdue. Unexpectedly, the wheels I had been waiting on arrived about a month after the BST wheels arrived. Such is life






As with these projects, things change along the way. The layout of the electronic package & how it was mounted needed to be changed as the Motogadget electrical manager(?) couldn’t support what we needed to do. this involved adding another type of PDM ( power distribution module) to the plan which was larger & had to be moved elsewhere. At the same time, the Ohlins steering damper that I bought for the standard side mount proved to be too long so plan B was to modify the dash mount & fit a new damper mounted across the top triple clamp as per Ducati 916 & others.







I had played around with a battery configuration & decided to make one out of A123 lithium cells. I had bought one off a guy in Germany back in 2009 for a 1098R we raced at the time & that battery is still working today. I just cut the number of cells back from 16 to 12 as the VDue doesn’t need the same power to crank it over as the 1098R.



It didn't live there very long & was moved back to the main frame but that required another round of fabrication by my mate.

[trev45]

Looking good Love the Carbon wheels a 300kg weight saving from the standed wheels and a thumb brake too is Mick having a come back ?

[Weed]

[trev45]

Forgot to ask who made the radiator ?

[Weed]

PWR out of Qld. 07 5547 1600. Mitch was the guy I was dealing with there.
mitch@pwr.com.au

I sent the original radiator over there & they made their drawings from that. They have supposedly modified their drawing to fix the lower fan mounting tab issue I had.
cheers

[trev45]

PWR does great work but you pay for it , I have had radiators made by them for some of my GP bikes