Psst- wanna buy a Diavel?
A dodgy bloke accosted me in a pub. He said “psst, over ‘ere. Do you wanna buy a Diavel?”
So, what sort of designer drug was he pushing exactly? It sounded like a mixture of Diazepam and Valium. Possibly Dynamite and Advil. Not wishing to display my ignorance, I asked “are they any good?”
It must be said, the last I time I’d bought illegal drugs in a pub was in 1993 just before a Prodigy gig, so I was well out of touch. But it brought to mind the often mis-attributed quote ‘you should make a point of trying everything once except for incest and folk dancing’.
“Yeah, they’re a bit of an acquired taste mate; a steam catapult launch off the USS Enterprise, the throb of a Santa Monica Boulevard cruise at sunset followed by a double-shot espresso at Caffè Terzi, Bologna”.
“A bit like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick?” I ventured.
“Yes, it can be a painful, expensive experience” came the unsettling reply.
“Where do I sign up?”
The next morning, nursing the mother of all hangovers, I roll up the garage door and there it is, glowering at me like Hotblack Desiato’s Sunship. The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it. Black fork sliders, black handlebars, a black screen and when you push a black button on the black dash, a black display comes on which says “do not push this button again”.
The facts:
2016 Ducati Diavel Carbon. Japanese import. Unregistered. Valium is a brand name of Diazepam. Not Oscar Wilde. USS Enterprise was an aircraft carrier. It is very black. The display said “Enter PIN” because the key-fob battery was flat. The Owner’s Manual (English section) runs to 238 pages, 112 pages of which describe the operation of the instrument panel. Fact.
So, to work.
First things first. Main battery on charge. New CR2302 in the key fob. Find the paragraph in the manual that explains how to select full power mode, turn the traction control and ABS off. Put the manual in a drawer. Book a track day. Check tyre pressures and oil level. Off we go.
What the actual?
This thing does not go. It’s fat, slow and has no ground clearance. Steers like an oil tanker. What have I done? Fat blokes on 25 year-old VTR1000’s are walking away down Teretonga straight. Check all the power modes just to make sure I’m not missing anything: 1) RAIN, 2) RAIN & LAMS, 3) MOBILITY SCOOTER. Back to the drawing board.
The Diavel is a fashion statement...
A bit like a Gucci handbag or a Rolex Submariner. A carrier bag or a Swatch will function just as well, but no one will look at you. Ducati jumped on the power cruiser bandwagon, starting with a Panigale 1199 engine and front end and adding a ridiculous back tyre and some swoopy carbon bodywork. They took the edge off the motor so as not to scare riders coming off Harleys and Viragos. Lots of bling and a relaxed riding position. They also made it quiet and civilised.
I don’t want quiet and civilised.
If I had a Gucci handbag, it would have a rabid chihuahua in it. If I had a Rolex Submariner, it would have a buzz-saw and super-conducting magnet in it.
In the 80s and 90s I built street-fighters.
Fast, matt-black, loud, illegal street-fighters. Z-900’s, Gixxers, Blades. This Gucci bag was going to get the make-over to end all make-overs.
It wouldn’t be done with an accessory catalogue and chequebook; it would be done with a hacksaw, a welder, and a chequebook.
Lets make it legal...
First it needed a rego plate, so off to the nice people at VTNZ where it was quiet and very well-behaved and did not let on that it was about to get some Super Soldier Serum and a blast of gamma radiation.
Mister Google says JDM bikes are restricted to 100hp or something stupid. Seat of the pants dyno says it’s got less than the ST4s track bike we built. It’s a fly-by-wire throttle so odds-on they’ve changed the map so the butterflies never open fully on the JDM version. Voltmeter on the TPS and yes, the throttles are only going 60% open - fuckety fuck.
Email to Tuneboy: does his ECU re-flash enable changing the throttle position maps as well as the fuel/ignition maps? No answer. No detail on the FAQ page. Never mind.
Contact Juan Brasal. Yes, he can remap the throttles. Good. I send the ECU with a graph of what I want the throttle to do for each mode. Change the lambda targets because the cat is going and tell it to ignore the exhaust valve. I get the ECU back, I plug it in.
Next, make it noisy.
The 11 degree Testrastretta engine is so called as it has 11 degrees of overlap at 1mm valve lift. This gives it a nice tick-over, boosts the mid range at the expense of top-end and reduces the unburnt HC’s in the exhaust to help meet emission requirements (always an issue with a 106mm bore).
The 11 degrees of overlap also means it’s fairly insensitive to exhaust layout, hence Ducati could get away with designing something that looks the part rather than something that acts the part. It also allows me to build something that sounds the part without worrying about buggering up the fuelling too much.
A de-cat and a 2.5” straight-through short muffler built from scrap aluminium should do it. The exhaust valve is junked (noise reduction only Officer) and a wide-band lambda probe is put in the remaining hole. A bit of trimming, hammering and the collector is raised up by 10mm to get a some much-needed ground clearance. Lighter, tighter, better.
Until I get some 1198 heads on it, there is no point in building a tuned exhaust.
A Power Commander III, on loan from Ducatispares.co.nz, is spliced into the loom so the fuelling can be cleaned up later. A K&N air filter takes care of the intake side.
Ground clearance: Bugger all.
The 80’s street-fighter solution to slow steering and extra lean-angle was to fit longer shocks or shorter dog bones, quick and easy. I have a look at the Diavel suspension linkage….
What in the name of Beelzebub is this?
How do I get the shock out?
Which Italian sadist decided to put the hydraulic preload adjuster there?
After dictating a dictionary of novel swear-words, the shock is out and the ruler and calculator are employed. If I add three teeth to the rear sprocket and make two adjustable tie-bars with rose joints from McGill Motorsport, I reckon I can add 85mm to the rear ride height without excessive anti-squat.
To the bat cave!
The side-stand is now too short, dammit.
The bike lists to port at an alarming angle.
The head-light also points at a spot six feet ahead of the front tyre. Duh. After the suspension nightmare, fixing this is a breeze.
Test ride time. Get your motor running, head out on the highway.
I grew up in the UK. When I was 15, I joined the ATC (Air Training Corps) because I wanted to be a pilot. We got to fly the Viking gliders and Chipmunk prop trainers. The first time I pushed the throttle to the firewall in a Chipmunk with its 145hp Gypsy Major engine, I thought the plane would shake itself to pieces before it got airborne. There was something primitive and visceral about flying a plane designed in the 1940s. I wondered what the WWII RAF pilots thought when they first flew their Spitfires with a snarling 1400hp Merlin under the bonnet. I don’t know for sure, but I bet it’s like opening up a re-mapped Diavel when the full 160hp is available on short gearing with a quick throttle. It’s the closest I’m going to get.
The 1198 engine can trace its lineage back to the bevel L-twins of the 70’s: perfect primary balance, uneven firing intervals, large bore, short stroke, no balance shafts and little flywheel. The Mitsubishi ECU, 4-valve, twin-plug heads, belt-drive short-duration cams and liquid cooling try to add a layer of sophistication to the ensemble, but underneath, it’s still a bit of an animal.
What sort of Animal?
A rhinoceros with a porcupine stuffed up its arse?
A grizzly bear covered in fire ants?
A gorilla with a machine gun?
Yes, sir.
What I should have remembered to do was to turn the traction control back on after the track day. With a quick-acting throttle, a big handful will unstick the rear tyre in third gear at 95km/h. I can still see the surprise on the faces of the family whose car I overtook while applying a heap of opposite lock. They probably remember the look on my face too. The three extra teeth on the back sprocket do make it lively.
How fast is it Mister?
To revisit the fighter plane analogy, what I need now is a head-up display. The bike has two dash display screens; both are so far below my eyeline that if I were to glance down and read them, by the time I looked up again I would be ploughing someone's paddock or be a hood ornament on an on-coming stock truck. I could always ride it slowly as Ducati intended, but where’s the fun in that?
Ebay does a great line in cheap Tyco AMP Superseal connectors so it was a simple matter to extend the wiring harness and mount the dash displays where I can see them. I still don’t like the bar-graph tacho though. It might have to go in favour of a Scitsu or shift-light but it’s not on the urgent list. Shift points are not a big deal on this bike. A quick shifter is superfluous. It’s all about mid-range. By 8500rpm it’s wheezing like a fat dad at a school sports day egg-and-spoon race.
You want flames with that?
Did you know you can use a Power Commander to add fuel to the over-run part of the map and get flames to shoot out of the exhaust when you blip the throttle? Best use of a PC yet and zero dyno time.
You can also reset the service lights and perform other ECU diagnostics using a $15 ELM327 OBDII interface from eBay and free MELCODIAG software from JPDiag. Send JP a donation if you use the software. Well worth it. Top bloke.
Hint: if you are a computer dunce, get your neighbour’s eight-year-old to do it for you.
Mad Max Diavel goes touring.
The Diavel will be my rego’d road bike for 2025 so it will have to take some luggage and a pillion. The factory telescopic “grab rail” is anything but. I’m sure it’s won design awards but it will keep neither pillions or soft luggage on-board when fast-forward is selected. Down to Ullrich Aluminium for some hand-rail tube and after a bit of creativity with the TIG, a functional, if utilitarian luggage rack and grab-rail appears.
I briefly ventured into the Diavel forums and apparently sometimes, the number-plate carrier / mudguard thing fatigues and falls off. This was all the excuse I needed to unbolt the hideous thing and make a side-mount plate bracket. I put the rego plate on a swivel so it can be rotated between landscape and portrait mode depending on whom I’m trying to impress. The down-side is that the rear tyre can spray water up my back from a wet road. Fortunately I usually have a tent or stuff-sack tied to my grab rail which makes an effective shield.
The Gen II bike also has a weird headlight which several people have described as ugly. I tend to agree so I replaced it with a twin, round LED light unit from a Buell.
Maintenance
If you don’t yet have a drug problem, you soon will if you try to maintain the Diavel yourself. I have real sympathy for the technicians who have to service and repair these bikes. I have been known to pick up a spanner but this thing makes me want to put it down again and reach for a large Scotch.
It’s not the fact that anything is inherently hard to do: the mechanicals are no more complex than the old Desmoquattro design. It’s just that everything is so hard to get at.
The process starts with a deep breath and then the screen and clocks come off so there is enough room to get the filler-cap surround off which allows access to the screws that hold the intake snout covers on. Removing the intake snout covers allows access to the tank cover screws at the front and removing the seat allows access to the tank cover screws at the rear.
Once the tank cover is removed you can get at the top tank holding screws but to disconnect the fuel lines you need to take the under-tray off which usually means you have to take the silencer off to get at the screws hidden behind it, and take the hugger off for space to manoeuvre the Allen wrench. If you are lucky, most of the under-tray and hugger screws will have long since departed due to vibration. If you are unlucky, they have thread-lock on them and put up a fight.
On this occasion my mission was to replace the throttle cables which were stiff due to corrosion. They had corroded because the original cable routing traps them between the fork leg and head-lamp bracket and abrades the outer sheath allowing water in.
Did I mention the bike was black?
The engine is black, the frame is black. The tank, the air-box, the coils, the ECU, the wiring, the cables, the fasteners, are all black. When you drop a black screw into the black labyrinth of pipes and wires, a black mood descends. To see what you are doing is a challenge unless you have several megawatts of shop lighting.
Another deep breath.
There are two throttle cables; opening and closing. The closing cable is fitted direct to the butterflies to enable the rider to close the throttle irrespective of what the ECU tries to do; a lesson from some wayward 1098s possibly?.
The cables are attached to the throttle-bodies which are, in turn screwed to the bottom of the air-box. So the air-box and TBs have to come out as a unit.
Unfortunately, an alphabet of electronic gadgets are attached to the air-box which have to be disconnected before it can come out. These include the ECU, the ABS, the coils, the TPS sensors (plural), AIT, MAP sensors (plural) etc.
After employing every 1/4” universal joint and ratchet extension bar that I own, the air- box is out. The bike now looks like someone has massacred several octopuses and spread their entrails all over it: apparently there are at least three wiring looms on this bike.
Lubricate the throttle cables, spindles and springs while they are out, have a quick look down the intakes (all okay here) and re-assemble. The best bit of putting it back together is tightening the ‘orizontal cylinder hose clip that secures the throttle-body to the inlet stub: a radar-guided, extra long Phillips screwdriver has to be employed while you wedge your head between the front wheel and the oil cooler, what fun!
To save time, the carbon bodywork is staying off until I’ve finished playing with the mechanicals. It gives the bike a completely different look, more H.R. Geiger than Marvel Studios.
No-one likes sloppy bits.
Programming a quick-action throttle shows up the sloppy fit of the throttle tube on the handlebar. I’m not sure which part is at fault or whether the carbon-fiber effect covering of the handlebar makes it worse but precise throttle control is impossible and going over bumps just adds more unnecessary throttle input. One thing you do not need on an engine with a lot of torque on a bumpy road is a poor twist-grip, especially if the the next test run is up Bluff Hill during the Burt Munro Challenge. A G2 alloy throttle tube from Ducatispares and 0.5mm of shim to control the excess end-float sorts it out.
Off to the Races with the Mad Max Diavel...
Up the Burt Bluff Hill Climb at pace, the Diavel is remarkably stable. The long wheelbase helps. The limiting factor is still ground clearance. The traction control (on minimum setting) chatters constantly as the rear wheel leaves the ground over bumps but the plot holds together.
The Super Corsa Diablo III tyres are confidence inspiring but it’s a pity they don’t do a 240 section slick.
The ECU throws up red fault warnings when it realises the PCIII is holding the injectors open for longer than its own map demands but it just keeps going anyway.
I did try fitting a 6” rim from a 1098 so that race rubber could be used but the offset is wrong and the 6” rim ends up one inch to the left of centre, so that’s a non-starter without some serious re-engineering.
The 1/4 mile drags at The Burt net a ribbon for 3rd in the Bears street category. Just snuck into the 10’s. First time I’ve launched the thing hard and still not sure what the traction control will do so I’m a bit tentative. No dramas at all. The thing just leaves with no fuss. Launch at 5k, short shift and then gas it. Change-up earlier than you think, the motor is done by 8500rpm.
Mad Max Diavel on Tour.
The next test is somewhat longer than the 1.1km up Bluff Hill and the drag strip; a 2500km round trip to the Cliffhanger hill climb near Masterton and two days blasting up the 6.4km closed mountain road.
The pipe is now a bit too loud for touring; not ear-achingly loud when aboard, but definitely antisocial when started up outside motel units at 6:30am (sorry if I spoiled your beauty sleep).
The bike turns heads when I rumble through town, not in a good way, but in the way you would turn your head if an artillery battery had opened up behind you. Maybe I need to re-think the muffler?
The tank range is not that great. Riding like a nana gets around 250km before the light comes on. Being more spirited gets 220km to reserve. At the hill climb, I was getting about 140km to a tank-full.
The Cliffhanger road is the perfect fast-flowing road to test motorcycle handling on. There is the flat-out section, the linked curves, the bumps and jumps. The fast riders complete the 6.4km from a standing start in less than 2 min 20 sec. That’s an average speed of 165km/h on a road that has 35km/h corners posted. Maximum speeds on the straight can exceed 265km/h. My best time on the Diavel was 2:35. I touched the right-hand foot-peg down at 220km/h on the first sixth gear right-hander. With the edge of the road and a wire fence approaching, I was just about out of lean angle. The exhaust down-pipe would be next to touch. Ground clearance is still an issue to be sorted then…
Two days and maybe 14 or 15 runs up the hill using all the power and all the revs, the bike did not miss a beat. The suspension is compliant and keeps the plot under control. The brakes are excellent. The steering is slow, very slow, even with about 85mm more ride height at the back. I needed every inch of the wide bars for leverage to get the bike to turn at speed. I think I’d have to re-angle the head-stock or build some custom yokes to sort that out.
But that’s not the point; I’ve got race bikes, I don’t need another. This thing is an experiment. It's got the makings of a competent tourer, back-road scratcher and no-prep drag-bike. In fact it’s almost a UJM but with the cachet of the Italian brand and the looks of something off the Fury Road film-set.
Amberley to Invercargill in a day is not too bad. Seat is maybe a tad soft but aches and pains are no worse than other bikes I’ve ridden that sort of distance. With a helmet on, no-one can hear you scream.
Back at the ranch...
Some rear-set footrest hangers are fabricated, 30mm up and 70mm back. Try to get some more weight over the front to get it turning. The riding position now feels more natural for me as I’ve never owned any cruiser style bikes.
18 Months and 10,000 km later I’m still not sure what the fate of this bike will be. I enjoy riding it; the combination of sophisticated brakes and suspension with a big mid-range punch. It steers well enough for a fast road bike but its not a track weapon. It’s a nice tourer except for the tank range. It’s pillion and luggage friendly with the rack. It sounds like Armageddon and it attracts attention everywhere. Maybe a suitably brash paint-job next? Whatever the outcome, its been an experience and, as Johnny Cash said “You’ll know it’s me when I come to your town”.
- Jon (no cash)
Everybody join the chorus:
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.