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Dave's 998 R (ROCKETMAN)
Dave bought his 2002 Ducati 998 Bip from us new.
After he had owned it for a couple of years he wanted to know if we could build a world superbike for the street. We would use his chassis as the starting point.
I think the only things left that are OEM are the frame, instrument cluster, headlight, throttle bodies and the wiring harness.
We did eventually find a world superbike engine for it and you don't want to know how expensive it was!
The 998 R with a 998 RS engine was finally completed a few years ago and delivered in the middle of winter.
When this bike fires up, it has a very deep exhaust note and riding it is something else.
I apologize about the photo not being very clear. The aluminum piece that you see covering the cam belt on the vertical cylinder was custom fabricated by Derek at Trillion Industries. Derek made one for the horizontal head, as well. The RS engines don't come with cam belt covers. So, we had to have something made. The 998 RS engine had a deep sump whereas the stock 998 engine did not. The deep sump engines were not seen on a base model until 2005 on a 999.
The radiator on this bike is also a superbike racing item. It helps in keeping this motor a little cooler from all the heat it produces. Again I used Derek at Trillion to weld spigots onto the rad in the right places so that we could mount the coolant hoses the same way as an OEM 998.
Samco hoses and Samco stainless clamps were used to help deal with the extreme heat generated from this race engine.
We managed to source a World Superbike rad through Ducati Performance. The World Superbike rad is a two piece rad, the lower section goes where the oil cooler is and the oil cooler goes where the headlight is suppose to be. However, this is a street bike and so the lower section was deleted. A 998 rad has two fans bolted onto the back, mounting brackets were added along with spigots for the Samco hoses to be mounted, too.
In 94 the 916 emerged as the premiere sport bike on the street. In World Superbike the 916 went through several changes and ultimately became the 998, evolution not revolution. However, the race bikes were making so much hp the stock swingarm was replaced with a one inch longer swingarm to provide more stability to the chassis and better control overall.
As testimony to how good the 916/996/998 was, were all the World Superbike Champion titles won.
And because we were building a superbike for the street, we needed to source a one inch longer magnesium swingarm. Plus, we didn't want to leave the swingarm untouched. A few hours were spent in preparing the swingarm for paint. The results speak for themselves.
I decided to put a picture of Dave's bike being finished because I am sure a few of you still don't believe it.
It is definitely the wildest bike I have had the opportunity to build. Plus, Dave was an extremely patient guy.
Over the next couple of weeks I will keep adding more photos so that you can see just how much was done to this bike.
Thanks Dave for all your patience!