GRIPONE 2 TRACTION CONTROL
Ducati 998-Willow Springs, June 2009
Who am I?
My name is Norm Macdonald, I am a Kiwi who has lived in California for the last 4
years. I began road racing in New Zealand in the early 1970’s starting on RD350’s and
by the mid 70’s I was riding TZ700A and later a TZ750D. In the late 80’s when 250
production racing was popular in NZ, I rode TZR, RGV and NSR 250’s in the 250
Production Champs. It was a good competitive affordable class. In the 90’s I rode
Ducati’s in the NZ
B.E.A.R.S Champs. The high
point of my career was
winning the Formula 1 and
Super Stock classes in the
NZ “Sound of Thunder
Championship” in 1994 on a
Ducati 900SS. Interestingly
enough, the person who
helped me with the
development of the 900 was
Pete Benson. Pete went on to Ducati 900SS at the “Sound of Thunder”, Ruapuna NZ, 1994
become Nicky Hayden’s
chief mechanic at Repsol Honda when he was world champion (he’s now Andrea
Dovizioso’s chief mechanic). Prior to coming to the US, I was racing a TZ250B, a great
bike.
Introduction
This all started when I accidentally acquired a salvage title 02’ 998 Biposto on Ebay in
mid 2006. It was initially bought from an insurance company and appeared on Ebay with
less than 2000 miles on after it had been stolen and later recovered intact and undamaged,
but missing a few critical parts. I eventually found all the parts to put it together so I
could ride it on the street. I soon found that the 998 wasn’t that great for transporting a
pillion passenger (my amazing girlfriend Mika) so I replaced the Ducati with a BMW
R1100S and I set about converting the 998 to a race bike.
The first thing I did was to send the motor to Fox Performance for a few upgrades. Ben
lightened/knife edged, polished and balanced the crank, added Carrillo rods and high
comp Pistal pistons. He also added some 998R cams and cleaned up the ports, lightened
the flywheel and put in a MPL slipper clutch with a titanium hub.
While Ben was busy doing that I found a Termignoni 54mm exhaust with carbon cans, 6
inch & 3.5inch Marchesini mag rims, an additional 6” BST carbon rear rim, 520 chain
conversion, magnesium hub, Fuelcel kevlar tank, Armour-bodies fairing seat and guard,
aluminum monoposto subframe, carbon fibre air box, small YTZ 7S battery and corse
carbon battery box, large carbon oil breather and air box reed valve, Ohlins rear shock,
Ohlins front forks with Brembo 4 pad calipers and 19x20 Brembo radial brake master
cylinder, Ohlins Steering Damper, Doc shop 27mm triple clamps, Woodcraft clipons,
Harris rear sets, Samco silicon hose kit, PC111 USB. I also replaced a lot of the stock
hardware with titanium.
The goal in building the 998 was to take off as much weight as possible, get a moderate
performance increase, but still retain the reliability and end up with a bike that handles
and stops well. It definitely handles and stops well and with a half a tank of U4.2 it
weighs 273lb. A quick trip to the Jett Tune in Camarillo to do a custom fuel map on
Johns Dynojet dyno resulted in a reasonable 137 hp and 77ft/lbs torque. Not a huge
amount of horsepower but enough to enable me to pull past a stock R1 on the front
straight at Willow Springs after getting a good exit at turn 9.
Why traction control?
With only a couple of track days under my belt since I have finished the Ducati, it is not
as though I have the confidence or the skill to spin the super sticky 195/65/17 Dunlop
Ntec radial slicks up on my Ducati at every corner but that was not the main reason for
going to traction control. Although I am 53 I still am very competitive but unfortunately
don’t heal as fast as I used to. I have had crashes where I have broken collar bones, arms,
wrists and several fingers together with bruises and the loss of large patches of skin in
various parts of my body a result spinning up the back wheel at the wrong time and “high
siding”. It’s not such a great feeling and tends to be expensive, so I have often thought
that having traction control would increase the safety margin while racing or at track
days. Unfortunately owning an older model European bike meant there was really no
traction control option available until I saw the Gripone unit on the Bellisimoto website. I
did a little research and rang Randy and a couple of weeks later the unit arrived.
Installing the Gripone.
After studying the instructions on the FG website
(http://www.fgspecialparts.it/traction_control.htm) prior to receiving the unit from Randy, I
had a fair idea what I needed to do to fit it to the 998 and started the fabrication soon after
I had put in my order with Bellisimoto. The FG website had some photos of a Gripone
traction control unit fitted to a Ducati Hypermotard. It showed the rear sensor was fitted
using brackets mounted off the bolt that clamps the hub on the single sided swinging arm
and the front sensor was mounted off the two axle clamp bolts on the front fork. I
discarded both those options because the hub on the 998 was positioned where rear disk
bolts were lower than the top of the swing arm. This meant the sensor wouldn’t line up
with the bolt heads and I didn’t want to have to adjust the front sensor bracket every time
I took off the front wheel.
Rear sensor installation
I mounted the sensor below the swing arm directly
through the rear brake hanger bracket. I removed the
disk and put a sharpened 8x1.25 bolt through the disk
mounting hole and to mark a point to drill the centre
of the sensor mounting hole. I removed the bracket
from the hub and drilled and taped the hole to
8x1mm.
In the instructions it says to replace the original
hollow headed bolts or cap screws, which hold the
disk to the carrier, with solid head bolts. I found
some replacement bolts with 10mm heads to replace
the cap screws, but there wasn’t enough clearance for
the heads to fit between the caliper mount and the
disk carrier. So I had the great idea to put the
original cap screws back in, because I had seen that
FG still used what appeared to be cap screws in the
pictures of the Hypermotard on their website. When I
powered up the TC unit, an LED on the end of the
sensor lights up as each bolt head passes the sensor to
confirm its functioning correctly. It was then that I
found out that as each side of the cap screw passes
the sensor it triggers it, so you get two pulses instead
of one. I ended up shortening the bolt heads to suit
and set the sensor gap for 1mm clearance.
Front wheel sensor
I mounted the front wheel sensor on an extension that
was milled and then welded onto a captive spacer
(made out of 6061 T6 billet) that I fabricated. This
replaced the existing front wheel spacer and the
Ohlins split axle adapter that fits through the bottom
of the fork leg. The reason I did it this way is: the
captive spacer always remains in position protecting
the sensor from damage and speeds up wheel changes
and most importantly the clearance between the
fasteners that hold the disk and the sensor will always
be correct.
All the disk brake fasteners were replaced with
8x1.25x16 bolts. The hole for the front wheel sensor
was drilled and tapped for an 8x1mm thread. The
sensor gap was adjusted to 1.0 mm and then blue
Loctite (low strength) was applied to the threads of
both lock nuts. I also drilled and tapped a 5.0 mm
hole in the back of the caliper adapter so a clamp
could support the sensor wire. The wire was then
cable tied to the left hand brake line and routed up to
the Gripone control unit mounted on the dash. .
Control unit installation
Due to the lack of under-seat space, after I fitted the
large Ducati-performance oil breather to the
monoposto sub frame, I had to shift the Power
Commander up to the instrument dash next to the
Daytona digital temperature gauge. After laying out
the Gripone wiring loom on the bike it seemed the
most logical place to mount the control unit was also
on the dash. After a bit of careful measurement I cut a
piece of 2.5mm carbon fibre sheet and screwed that
to the face of the instrument panel. I then velcro’d the
Power Commander and the Gripone to the dash and
temp guage to the face of the Power Commander. In this location it is easy to see the
LED’s and adjust the values on the unit.
Wiring
I chose to install the unit so it cut the fuel rather than
the ignition. The instructions for wiring the unit to the
injectors were very simple to follow. Unfortunately in
my case it wasn’t quite so simple since I already had
a Power Commander fitted and it’s wiring harness
plugged into the fuel injectors
The instruction said to install the Gripone wires close
to the injectors but if I attached the Gripone wires
near to the injectors it would mean cutting into the
Power Commander harness. If I did this I couldn’t
get the plugs that attach to the fuel injector, back through the hole in the bottom of the air
box because the plugs are too large to fit through the hole. The only options I had were to
attach the Gripone wires lower down in the harness, or make the hole in the bottom of the
air box bigger.
I thought the designers of the system must have had a reason for attaching the Gripone
wires close to the fuel injector so I ended up making the hole in the air-box larger. After
unsuccessfully trying to splice the Gripone wires into the fuel-injection harness using the
supplied crimp plugs, I ended up soldering the connections and using shrink tubing over
the join. I then wrapped the wires in self-sealing silicon tape to support and protect the
joins. One of the odd things included in the kit was a fuse holder and fuse, but I could not
find anywhere in the wiring diagram or instructions where it should go so I left it out
The next problem was to find a suitable grommet to seal the larger hole in the air-box so
it would still pressurize. Not so easy I found out. I ended up using an aftermarket master
cylinder gasket that was the right size, which I found at Kragens Auto Supply. I punched
a hole in the center large enough for the wire to pass through. From the edge of the hole I
cut to the outside, then pushed the wire through the slice and carefully fitted the gasket to
the hole in the bottom of the air-box. Since the gasket material was quite thin I got some
black silicone and filled the depression in the gasket making sure the wires remained in
the center. I just need to push the plug through the air box bottom followed by the plugs
at the end of the cable to remove the air-box.
On-off switch,
I attached the on-off switch to the clutch lever bracket using
a bit of carbon fibre panel to mount the switch.
Track day.
After I completed the installation I switched on the ignition switch and the LED’s flashed
on in conjunction with those on the Power Commander and then promptly went off. That
had me a little worried because that wasn’t mentioned in the instructions. I suspect that
has something to do with the way it’s wired in with the Power Commander. Once I
started the engine everything functioned fine. Configuring the unit is simple and intuitive
and done by scrolling through the functions (spinning, cut, engine, pulse and ratio) and
selecting the values with the two buttons on the front of the panel. After setting the base
values (Front and rear tire size, where the TC is connected to i.e. fuel injector, coil or
crankshaft pickup and the number of pulses detected by the speed sensors on the front
and rear wheels) I selected the variable values based on what I read in the user manual. I
started with the unit set to # 3 out of 8 levels for spinning ( the amount of spin before the
TC cuts in) and # 4 out of 8 for cut (the amount of power that is cut to stop the wheel
spinning).
Once I had the installation complete I went out to Willow Springs to test out the TC unit.
The day started off hot and windy (it peaked about 106 degrees and 30 knot winds) and I
had a set of new Dunlop Ntec’s slicks fitted to the Ducati. It was only my second track
day on the Ducati and at Willow but I managed 4 x 20 minute sessions in B grade before
the heat finally caused me to expire. The LED’s on the dash indicated that the Gripone
unit was functioning correctly, but with a new bike, sticky tires, and me still learning my
way around Willow and only riding to about 85-90% of how I would normally would, it
was not the best test to show the Gripone’s potential. However when I do get the time to
string enough races together and get back to where I have the confidence to slide the tire
regularly, I think that the
investment in traction
control is going to pay
off. My goal for the next
few races is to work on
my speed, try to learn
how best to adjust the
spinning and cut
perimeters so it suits my
style. I need to gain
confidence on how the
Gripone TC unit reacts to
sliding and once I have
that, I should be able to
maximize my corner exit
speed while minimizing
the chances of an
inadvertent high side
spoiling my day.
I hope this helps with the installation of Gripone at least, hopefully we can update the
review on how the Gripone works when I have had a bit more chance to play with it.
I would just like to say thanks to Randy and Bellisimoto for being great to deal with.
Cheers
Norm