Louigi Moto

We’re shining a light on some of the biggest and best players in the Classic Racing world and this time we’ve been speaking to Louigi Moto’s Richard Llewellin.

Based in the South West of the UK, Louigi Moto specialises in making (and keeping) Ducatis fast. We talk to Richard Llewellin.

INTERVIEW

CR: HOW DIDYOU GET INTO BIKES? RL: As a boy I had a fascination for motorcycles and aeroplanes and I was the most excited kid in the street when I got my first bike – an FS1E – in the spring of 1976 when I was 16. Man, that summer was the best. I had freedom, a proper job and it was hot. Life was good. By the time I turned 17, I wanted more speed so I went out and bought a Suzukits185 and discovered the local green lanes (which were still in abundance back then). I then progressed to more serious competition machinery and started to compete in local off-road events, working my way up to Enduro racing. It was much to the dismay of my father, who had no interest in motorcycles (despite owning a James Captain in the late 1950s), and complained that it was a waste of time and money – he couldn’t understand why I didn’t like football. I still have no interest in football and he still has no interest in motorcycles.

CR: HOW DIDYOU START SPANNERING? RL: As long as I can remember I’ve always had a passion for making things. Even at a young age I was a regular visitor at my father’s friend’s scrapyard, and I soon learned how to take things apart – quickly realising that some of the parts I removed would also fit other vehicles. After school, I was fortunate to join the biggest local employer in town, carrying out a formal apprenticeship with Cadbury PLC as a heavy goods and motor vehicle mechanic. I spent 10 years fixing anything that had wheels and an engine (from 29 tonne articulated trucks through to the MD’S Jaguar and a Lister engined tug used for pulling waste). There were lots of mechanics on site – some were good, some not so good. I learned from the good ones, and ended up doing all the tricky stuff that wasn’t mainstream. During that time I was racing motorcycles, building hotrods and I also had a little sideline building engines and maintaining friends’ motorcycles and cars – and generally having an all-round good time. My life changed in 1986 when Cadbury made me redundant, and with a recession looming, I decided to start my own business. My father also worked at the factory as a manager, and was pensioned off with early retirement. With his redundancy money, he bought this big Georgian hotel and the whole family moved in. At the rear of the premises was a large workshop where I could start my little business. During the next few years of hard work the workshop became the envy of the local town. I had many bikes and cars and I raced everything I owned.

CR: HOW DID LOUIGI MOTO START? RL: Step forward to the 1990s – and I was properly into watching the Superbikes ontv. And so I went out and bought a new 748SP (one of just a handful imported into the UK). Me and some pals worked out a 40-mile circuit through the Mendip Hills, starting and ending at my workshop. We called it the Mendiptt. It started to get a bit silly on the road so I decided to do a couple of trackdays on the 748. Before long I entered a race with NG Roadracing. I was instantly competitive and the bike quickly evolved from a modified roadbike to a full blown race machine. Soon I was preparing other Ducati race machines for lads on the grid. My little cottage industry took off and I quickly progressed to fixing road bikes from the local Ducati Owners’ Club (which I was running at the time). The hotel was sold in 2002, so I decided to rent a small industrial unit and start all over again.

CR: WHAT IS IT ABOUT DUCATIS? RL: What I like about the Ducati is the engineering. I like the fact that at the time I got into them, all my friends thought I was mad and very few people knew anything about the fuel injected four-valve engines. I just took one apart and thought ‘this is fairly basic’ and set about doing a few things to make it a bit better. In my world everything can be made a bit better. Even the best. I’m not so passionate about the newer bikes though.

CR: WHOWORKS FORYOU? RL: At one time there were five of us working at Louigi – but I’ve since slimmed it down to just myself and ‘Big’ Chris Perrott in the workshop, with Bob Chapman coming in a couple of days a week to look after the sales stuff. In my book, Chris is the best Ducati mechanic in the Northern hemisphere – and he does 80% of all

the retail work in the workshop. Every single job is discussed by the pair of us, whether It be a service or a full engine blueprint. We also have Chris Steedman who runs the dyno in the same building. His dyno service goes hand in hand with our custom engine builds, because we can adjust the fuel mapping and ignition through the original factory ECU without the need for an additional adjustment module or device.

CR: WHAT HAVEYOU BEEN UPTO RECENTLY? RL: We’ve been developing the littlett1 750 Ducati – after many seasons racing in the Uk-based Desmodue series. It all started with a phone call from Ian Sinclair and then a test ride by Alex Sinclair. We developed the machine which Alex has led to several Classictt outings and silver replicas, a championship win in the CRMC Post Classic 750, a 1300 class win – and many lap records including the outright at Chimay. Since then we have developed a 500 version of the same machine – which went on to win the Post Classic 500 Air-cooled Championship in 2018. Following on from the 750 and 500 models we’ve also built an 1100 with rising rate rear suspension which Richard Molnar is campaigning under the Molnar Precision flag. Although the machine is still under development, it’s had a promising start to its career with Richard Molnar spannering the bike at the Preston workshop, and carrying out the development the circuit.

CR: WHAT SERVICES DOYOU OFFER? RL: We can do cylinder head work and gas flowing, Pistal piston and Carillo conrod supplies, superfinishing, crank grinding and resizing, cylinder bore resizing and plating, crank balancing, valves and valve guides, camshaft and rocker arm repair, cylinder head skimming, Malossi carb kits, oversize main bearing modification to worn crankcases. We manufacture our own vernier adjustable cam pulleys, rearset footrest and the 45mm serpent primary exhaust for thett1. We also have a new RTD developed Ignition system for the later ‘straightcut’ family of engines that does away with the Kokusan system and is fully adjustable.tab alloy fuel tanks are usually in stock,t45 cantilever and rising rate frames are made locally to order. Suspension-wise we use the Italian made Matris rear shock to our own spec, and the Louigi Moto developed Marzzocchi M1R fork internals. We’re suppliers of Marvic and Dymag wheels and suppliers of Avon racing tyres too. In fact we only supply parts that we use on our own racing machines, or parts that have been developed by ourselves on the track. And our results speak for themselves, don’t they…? We also manufacture parts that are no longer available and make our own special parts which we don’t really advertise.there aren’t many shops building Ducati engines, so we just keep them for ourselves; they are part of our special recipe.there is a good market in the second-hand spares though – so we’re constantly looking for parts and trading in older Ducati spares. In fact, we still buy whole bikes and strip them down for spares.