Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Hancock
Last week I rode my lowly '86 Honda VF500 Interceptor to work every day and happened to end up following a '95 Ducati 900 home a couple of the days. Both days we both chose to ride the same 10 mile twisty section on the way home. It has very few safe passing zones and when we came to the first one, we both jumped out and shot by a group of cars. I am pretty sure he was winding hard as the passing zone was short and he tucked as he pulled out. I suprisingly stayed very close to him with my old 500cc Interceptor. What gives? Are these older Ducatis dogs? I occasionaly watch the classified ads for used Ducatis, but I would have assumed the 900's were a big bunch faster than my old 500. We had a blast chasing one another thru the twisties at a somewhat cautious pace.
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My own '93 900 SS modded with Keihen flat slides, Termi exhaust, Cosworth 12:1 pistons, and some mild head porting made 74 hp and 60-some-odd ft lbs at the rear wheel on a dyno just last month. The stock 900 SS's (two of them) that ran were under 60 hp. I got the impression from a lot of folks' reactions (comparing their runs to previous runs on other dynos) that this was a particularly "stingy" dyno, with their numbers being well down from what they had gotten elswhere. Even so, the modern 600's were a good 20 hp up on my bike.
At any rate, there is a big difference between a stock bike and even a slighted hopped-up bike. They do have a reputation in Ducati circles as being real dogs right out of the box, but they also have a reputation for responding very well to some simple mods. The difference between my numbers and the couple of stock bikes points to that.