AdventureBoy
Pack Dog
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2007
- Messages
- 339
- Reaction score
- 4
- Location
- Randburg, Gauteng
- Bike
- Honda CRF-1000L Africa Twin
This story goes back to 1974 when my Dad purchased a brand new Ducati 350cc desmo single. It was known as the 'Silver Shotgun'. It came in 250, 350 and 450. The 250 were supposed to clocked the magical 100mph in racing trim. Although the 350 and 450 had a few extra cc they did not perform that much better than the 250. Many felt that the 250 was the best of the lot. I remember from when he got the bike it did not perform very well. I remember riding it at Kayalami (at a club run, no serious racing) and not being able to get it to redline in 5th. I inherited the bike and it stood for many years in my Garage. I have done a bit of a restore and got it back on the road. Performance is still a problem. My brother recently acquired a 450 version and the difference in performance is significant. This weekend I took the bike to his place and we tried to get it to go. We swopped parts from the 450 and tried it on the 350 and visa versa.
Started with checking the valve clearance. The inlet was a bit tight so we replaced the shim to give it the correct clearence. We double checked the valve timing as well as the ignition timing and points. We checked the compression which was good. Changed the spark plugs and tried a different coil. I ran my bike with the 450 carb, which made no difference and ran his on my carb without any problems. Bike will only pull 6000 in top (redline is at 8500). GPS speed showed max of 135 on a slight downhill, quite a bit off the magical 160. The bike has a clear exhaust, so no baffeling problems. This all happened in the low-veld, so altitude was not a problem. The bike also looses speed quickly on the hills.
Any bright ideas would be welcome. If no solution is found I will just carry on running as is.
Started with checking the valve clearance. The inlet was a bit tight so we replaced the shim to give it the correct clearence. We double checked the valve timing as well as the ignition timing and points. We checked the compression which was good. Changed the spark plugs and tried a different coil. I ran my bike with the 450 carb, which made no difference and ran his on my carb without any problems. Bike will only pull 6000 in top (redline is at 8500). GPS speed showed max of 135 on a slight downhill, quite a bit off the magical 160. The bike has a clear exhaust, so no baffeling problems. This all happened in the low-veld, so altitude was not a problem. The bike also looses speed quickly on the hills.
Any bright ideas would be welcome. If no solution is found I will just carry on running as is.
