Celebrate your success. Wise words from a friend of mine .  Last week I checked my visitors counter and I discovered that we passed the 10.000 visitors. It might seem like a small number but as for a small group of enthusiasts it is a compliment. I would like to thank you all for your interest in Panigaletwins and please keep us inspired. We will go on doing the unexpected with the black sheep of the family and keep these bikes on the road.

Lately I have had many requests for ignition parts as the old parts aren’t there any more. I have been working on building an ignition but progress is slow. We had a discussion which ignition can be used and has been used already. Ian Dobson from the UK showed my that Pazon already manufactures the Pazon Sure-Fire ignition system which is Plug and Play. It is actually an ignition designed for a Honda 450 but can be used for the Ducati Paralleltwinas well. For details you can  contact Kirby Rowbotham at  kirby@kirbyrobotham.com

In the past decade the press and the rest of the world have been looking at the Paralleltwins as if they where from another planet. Negative comments have been written about it’s durability and the bad reputation of any part breaking down. Exactly this is what keeps us going !!  Proving  the rest of the world wrong and let anybody know that the Paralleltwin is just as good as any other Ducati is one of our main goals. Ian Dobson from the UK is helping us a lot with that. Ian took his 500 SD to the ultimate test ……. the Motogiro d’Italia.  He finished this glorious event in 2011 and just to show you it isn’t all talk and no show here are some picturs. Thanks Ian for proving everybody wrong …..

Still working on a electronic ignition but in order to get it right I need to figure out what the correct timing is. With this engine nothing is straightforward, so why should this be ……. at this point the ignition is compared with the one from a Jawa !!!  I wonder where this is going !  Just took a timing disc and a set of Fiat dashboard lights, pretty basic but it did the job.

Sometimes you stumble upon new information. Just as I did some weeks ago when I visited Rob Klootwijk who used to be in charge of the Ducati Club Nederland archive. We found our selves talking about Parallel Twins and Rob told me he should have something nice somewhere. Of course I was interested right away and just some days later he came up with the following copy of a brochure. According to his story this was a pre-production 500 Parallel Twin for the French market. As Gerald from paralleltwins.com told us this folder is of the 1965 prototype which unfortunately never got in to production. The 500 engine even used push-rods to operate the valves. Originally Ducati designed it for the French market but it never got there so they tried to sell the idea to the Italian police-army administration allso without succes

I wanted to try to see how a 2-1 exhaust system would work and would look. I my garage I found some parts lying around and made in some hours a system. And this how it looks like. Not only just for fun but as well as an experiment for our racing Parallel Twin which could be finished this autumn or this winter. Took the bike out today for a test and it really revs a lot easier and sounds great as wel, not too loud and not to quite either.

When Mototrans took over part of the production from Ducati they must obviously have known about the technical imperfections that Ducati decided not to perform. Mototrans actually did a good job by looking at the engine design and focused on the problems at hand. One of the issues is oil supply and temperature to the cylinder head. There will be bearing wear at some point and if that happens oil supply to the cylinder head is brought back to a minimum so the cams will start to wear after a while and you’ll finally break down. The other issue is temperature. The plain main-bearing heat up the oil a lot higher and faster than roller-bearings do. The oil which reaches the cylinder head is is way to hot to get a smooth oil film and will burn especially when you’ll push the bike, let alone start racing with it.

Mototrans brought a solution to the table and implemted an oil cooler and re routed the oilways. The oil isn’t internally distributed but simpley brought to the outside of the engine. Thinking I’ll never find an engine like that  I just happen to stumbel in to a Mototrans 500 Desmo which are quite rare. I will find out how they really did it. On the outside of the engine it’s clear but I wonder how the inside has been adapted. Soon more about the Mototrans.

If someone has more information about these Motortrans Ducati’s I’d be happy to hear from you!

 When building the dry clutch we found out that we couldn’t use any parts from existing models who have a dry clutch. To make things worse the drive gear for the oil pump is situated at the rear of the primary gearbox gear and the primary gear shaft is to short to fit something else.

 We found out we couldn’t use any other shaft and made a special nut and worked on the inner clutch drum to accommodate the nut and use it as a centre for the inner drum. The gear and outer drum had to be machined as well to make it all fit. The inner drum is made of aluminium and is bolted to the primary gear which still holds the oil pump gear. As you can see the side cover has now a large hole in it with clutch sticking out. At this moment there is no seal yet in the side cover but it will be made later. It will be the same set-up as modern bikes have.

When this clutch is tested we will let you know, as you can see in the picture we are still in an experimental fase but we did come a long way.

Progression is slow like it always is when you are working on innovations. There hasn’t been a testdrive due to snow and terrible amounts of salt on our roads. But we did manage to get some parts together and build a bike just to try and fit the engine and see how other components will work.

Here is a picture so far.  One of our engines is near completion and things are looking great ! If the weather gods are good to us there can be even time for a test drive.

The 350 GTV saw it’s life light in 1977 to replace the 350 GTL . At that time the 350 GTL suffered from failing crankshafts and bad electrics. But unfortunately the damage was done and the motorbike market wasn’t waiting for an other paralleltwin to go touring. At that time the Jap 2 and 4 cylinder engines had been widely introduced and where gaining popularity. In 1981 the last 350 GTV was produced and died a quite death.

One of the large problems with the Parallel-twin are the main bearings. They are not the actual problem but they tend to fail after a while. The crankshaft is pushed against the bearing flange on either side of the casings during acceleration or deceleration and are easy to wear out. This “shifting” in forces is caused by the primary drive’s helical gears. To get rid of these forces straight cut gears are in order but unfortunately the Parallel Twin was never equipped with that . . . . . . so now it is time to start experimenting ! Together with a dry clutch here are the results so far.

 At this point we found out that we could not use some standard gears, it didn’t fit like it should and an easy alternative is not available. So for now we are postponing the straight cut gears and get on with other projects to solve the engine problems.