Dial Duke 999!
Louigi Moto's Rich Llewellin took the plunge with this 2003 Ducati and ended up making a beautiful homage to Paul Smart's lmola 1972 winner ...
I Ithe new Louigi Mote 999 racer was born out of regret," so says owner Rich Llewellin. We had an amazing 749R-based special that was the most wonderful of machines to ride and we sold It on to make way for other projects. As soon as It was wheeled out of our North Somerset-based workshop by its new owner I knew that I had made a mistake. It's taken a few years for the right bike to come along and then the back end of 2019 a 999S of 2003 vintage came in wanting restoration. It had been in a shed in Cornwall, unused for nearly all of Its life; in fact, not even showing 900 miles on the speedometer. We tried to sell It for the owner as he didn't want to go forward with the project as it needed a lot of work, so I struck a deal with them and got the project going myself as soon as I had put the phone down from the deal. In fact, I had the thing totally apart before I did the bank transfer!
The motor had all the outer covers removed along with the wheels and sent off for powder-coating as they were badly corroded due to the salty Cornish air. All of the road parts were sold on to pay for the other bits that had to be replaced to turn it into the racer, and we decided the whole project needed to be on a tight budget. The cylinder heads were taken off and skimmed and some correction work done to the ports; the flywheel went on the lathe and had a rather large amount of material removed; and a slipper clutch was found in a old box of bits. Nothing else was done to the motor, other than detailing.
The frame had gone to our good friends DW Automotive and after some discussion we decided to carry out the Paul Smart replica paint scheme that we had spoken about many times on other projects, but were never actually bold enough to go ahead with. Another good friend of mine had discovered a 2005 swingarm in his shed, It needed a bit of fettling, but was more than useable. Rather than just re-use the exotic alloy rear sub-frame, we cut up a steel one and modified it to work with the single seat, mainly because the alloy ones don't crash well and was worth more to sell and invest the money in the project. We had also found some 2005 model
Oh Ii n's forks lying around that had the radial mount calipers, and a set of Metzler M4s were sourced from our friends at Moose Racing for a good price.
While the project was on the ramp a good customer came In and took a liking to the project. Also being an owner of a similar build 999 as ours, he said he had some magnesium Marchesini wheels that needed refurbishment and were for sale. They were quickly snapped up and sent to TPCS for a Dichromate, crack test and powder-coat.
Due to the 54mm bore exhaust that came with the machine being made specifically for the grey swingarm, it wouldn't fit the new black 'arm or the fairing around it that we had just purchased, so exhaust and fairing were cut up into lots of pieces and welded and fibre-glassed respectively, and then remodel led to fit (not a five-minute task, let me tell you!).
The bodywork went back down to DW Automotive for the final lustre. I had some ideas of the look I wanted. I drew around a VW Splitscreen front badge for the numberboard size and I think It worked! The number boards had to be the feature of the bike. Well, along with the ice-blue frame and super chrome effect silver and a bit of free reign from Del the paint sprayer. The only person he had to please was me and I was more than happy. With the bike now running it just needed a good fuel map made for both cylinders. This task was carried out by Chris of CJS Racing. Luckily the dyno he operates is in our building so it didn't have to go far, and after fuel and ignition correction the silver beast we now called 'lmola' made exactly 150bhp at the rear wheel. We've built quite a few 999 motors and this one didn't quite perform as we expected and another 5bhp at the rear wheel could be had with the 57mm exhaust system, but the budget was met and the power had to stay as it was. The machine was first used at Pembrey circuit on an ACU training day just before the lockdown, and will be used in anger at the NG Roadracing club meetings with the Formula Prostock Battle of the Twins race series. I hope to keep you posted on how things go.