The sand cast cases hold up longer under race conditions. They weigh a bit more and have a bit more mass (I know, almost the same thing).
In a day long ago high horsepower (150
) 888's and early 916's would crack the cases arround the crank main bearings where the crank was trying to twist out of the cases. The sand cast cases don't flex much at all.
The newer die cast cases are better than the old ones, especialy the deep sump ones as far as resisting flx. But the case design is about a million years old and Ducati probably found it less expensive to sand cast them opposed to re-designing them.
I heard from a very smart and good looking
person who comes on this board now and then that even the 1098 has the same old style cases because Ducati couldn't afford to update the assembly line. I seem to remember it being in the $50M range.
Ducati desperately needs a new case design to go with the new top end. They could, and if they would shave 40-50mm off the length of the motor they could get the chassis working a lot better. And that would be something, because it works great now! The ability to put an even longer swingarm on it and or pull the steering head back would help the bike out a lot as far as keeping up with the Joneses.
Check out these numbers. I just went out in the shop and measured:
06 R6:
- wheelbase 1387mm
- swingarm length 570mm
06 GSXR1000:
- wheelbase 1412mm
- swingarm 562mm
05 999R stock:
- wheelbase 1422
- swingarm length 478mm
05 999R with 27mm triples and the good race geometry:
- wheelbase 1430mm
- swingarm length 505mm
Just take a gander at those percentages! The R6 and GSXR have swingarms that are about a mile longer than the Ducati with less wheelbase. You can certainly see the MotoGP trickle down effect with the R6. 41% of the wheelbase is swingarm!
Look at these percentages when stacked up next to each other:
- R6 41%
- GSXR 40%
- Stock 999 34%
- 999 with the good geometry 35%
The longer you get the swingarm the more weight you can get on the front tire without having to jack the back end of the bike up to the moon, and then loose traction. When 999's come out of the box they have about 48% of the weight on the front wheel. The R6 has 52%. That is a massive difference when it comes to how the bike behaves. The "good" 999 geometry is hard pressed to get 52% of the weight on the front wheel, even with the swingarm all the way back as far as it will go and the front tire touching the cylinder head under braking.
I would bet that if you could shorten the 999 cases by 50mm and get that back in swingarm length the bike would be incredible. Ducati still manages to win races, and world champinonships despite basing the foundadtion of their bike (the cases) on a design that can be traced back to the early 80's (20+ years ago).
It looks like we will have to wait for the 1098 redesign though
Could be 6+ more years before they get new cases.
I wish I had the time to build a set of billet cases that are shorter and stack the trans up, or replcae the trans with something else, etc. Then weld up a frame to match the shorter cases. Then just put that length back into the swingarm. I'll bet just doing that and making no other changes to the bike would be worth a second a lap in the right hands
differance between 999r cast motor and 999series?
My 916 was a Horrid Blood Sucking Bitch.
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