DIY Ducati 996 Replica Electric Motorcycle
Some of y’all in the comments see this thing in the garage while I’m working on the Mad Dog and wondering what the heck this is all about. Figured I’d do a video on it. This is going to be my full size 17in wheels, regular motorcycle frame. I want to do something with a mid drive and I wanted to try something full size. That Soon GTS35 is what I’m going to use. It’s a 20,000 watt motor, 40,000 watt peak. I want to see if they can drive a big bike like this. After watching the Ducati superbike run off and leave the Jet bikes in the straits at Daytona, you might have rushed right off to the dealer the next morning and gave him 28 grand for a new 996. Much to your disappointment, even a Japanese 600 could outrun your new 996. And the leader bikes don’t even play with you. This is how you check clearance. Let the forks come all the way out. collapse this thing all the way and make sure it doesn’t hit in here. Make sure the belly pan doesn’t hit the ground because you didn’t get the FO1, you got the Biposto. So, Carl Fogerty riding that Foggy had different suspension, different wheels, different brakes, different motor. You just ended up kind of looking like a guy who raced Daytona on a bike that kind of look like a bike that raced Daytona. Different frame and different swing arm. So, don’t tell me my Ducati is not real. I ordered these really cool fairings from China. They paint them however you want. This is just one of the examples they had on their website. I just ordered it like this, just like they showed. I think this is a Troy Bis’ bike, maybe. Famous Dicotti Rider, maybe late ‘9s, early 2000s. But yeah, you can get these however you want, any number you want. They’re pretty cheap. That whole box comes to your door for around 450 bucks, something like that. It’s a lot of time to weld tabs on, make tabs, grind tabs, but mostly it’s all custom. Trying to get everything to fit. It looks really good. A nice solid mount on that. Yes. So, it’s a big project to put them on, but it’s worth it. It’s going to make it look like a Ducati. Kind of like surgery in here. You got to get this stuff to fit. In my goal to build the cheapest Ducati ever known to man, I started with a Suzuki Bandit GSF1200. $200. Perfect rolling chassis and clean tidle. This is not a real steep head angle, but it’s steeper than most cruisers. It’s got rear set foot pegs, so it’s like a sport bike. It’s got sport bike ergonomics. Got the down tube, so you can set a battery on it. And it’s steel, so you can weld to it. I think I’m going to stand the battery up here like a siron. Then the motor will fit right here. I think I’ll put the controller up here under the tank. So, I’m going to make a shelf up here. It’s going to sit inside this tank. Now, obviously, this thing will blow up on me, but I actually filled this tank with water for about a day and then drained it all out. I think it’s pretty good. We’re going to find out. [Music] I was in disbelief that I got a donor bike with a perfect gas tank. And of course, while I was doing that mod, I dropped it, dented the front, put scratches in it. Unreal. That’ll hide the controller and the wiring and look real nice. show you a cool ghetto trick here. So, you rebuild your forks on your donor bike cuz they’ll probably be clapped out. The fork seal sits here. Dust cover sits here. And I don’t typically run dust covers. I don’t like them because water still gets below them. I leave the dust covers off. Your fork seal sits down in there and it leaves you a ledge where water collects. It rusts and pits your forks. So, you need new tubes cuz as these go up and down between the seals, the oil leaks out and it scratches the seals. The chrome on these forks is amazingly strong. So, I’ve taken a fine file and I’ve made sure that there’s no bumps sticking up. You can sand this chrome. I’ve wire brushed it out. Try to get all the rust out of the pits. Cleaned it with some carb cleaner. Get any grease out of there, any oil, and I’m going to bondo it with JB Weld. JB Weld to be super resistant to all chemicals and oils. Let that dry. And I’m going to sand that. And you can get that to seal with that oil seal. Again, that JB Weld’s plenty strong enough to go up and down on that seal. That’s smooth enough for the seals. Now, these neck bearings were all but frozen solid. We just cleaned them out with carb cleaner. They’re still salvageable, though. If they were a rotating part, like in a wheel, they would definitely need to be replaced. With a little bit of turning a steering head does, these are fine. I’ll grease them up, reuse them. Same with the swing arm. You can see these bumps in here where the handlebars were designed to be, but I’m going to go with clipons so we make it into a Ducati. These look like they’re missing a part. But if they were lightning holes to make it lighter and racier, they would look good. Now I’m making something look like a race part. Drill holes in it and countersink them. We’re going to get rid of all these creases so it won’t look like a forge part. It’ll look like a billet part cut in the CNC machine at the Dicati race factory. I already know what you’re thinking. Go to a junkyard. Look at Bandit. They all have the fork sheared off at the lower clamps. Those forks are going to shear off those lower clamps before this thing even gets deformed. A top plate is actually a lot less structural than you might think. And when you’re done, you end up with this kick-ass top plate and it was free. And if you did pay $300 for it, some fanboy is going to have one just like it. Going to be asking you, “Where’d you get your top plate? How much did it cost?” You’re going to tell them, “You can’t afford it cuz you got it from the Dicati Racing Factory in Italy.” Thought I’d have more room in here when I ordered these screens. Should have got a 5-in one. But when I’m riding about this angle here, I can see most that screen and this screen. This one I’ll turn with the bars. This is my display. Miles an hour, amps, gear, things like that. The Android Auto, but more importantly, it’s got the rear view camera. Two of these brackets. They got to be cut off. I’m going to try to use these brackets. We’ll see how that works. That top mount is 16 mm inside diameter. That bolt’s only 12. Maybe it was 10. But I had to make a spacer to go in there that was 16 mm outside diameter and the inside diameter of that bolt and the length of that hole. I’ll put the dimensions on the screen. Kind of shape some pieces to hold the bottom mounts. If you leave scrap steel laying around, I steal it. And I always use this scrap when I’m making a project. When I did this electric conversion on the Mad Dog, I tried to use zero welding, but on this one, I’m going to use a bunch of tools. And honestly, they’re not that much. If you have a garage and you go to Harbor Freight, you’re talking about a cheap welder and a few grinders and a cutter. You’re looking at maybe 300 bucks right there. That’s it. And it just opens up a whole world of possibilities. The key to making good mounts is to get everything fitted, get everything bolted on, try to think ahead. I couldn’t go with a throughbolt because this frames in the way. I had to go with two individual bolts like that. So, I get everything mounted and cut, grind it where I need to, and then I will weld it in place. And I’ll do more than just tack weld it. I’ll weld it strong enough so that when I pull this whole thing apart and I start welding all my frame parts and cutting off all the stuff I don’t need. This will be cut off. This will be cut off. All this kind of stuff here. All my brackets and stuff will get welded stronger. You don’t want this stuff moving when you weld it. You don’t want the heat to move it. So, you want to weld it a little bit stronger than tack welding. So, I’ve got my chain line set. Got it all mounted how I want it. And that is a good motor mount. Of course, I’ll pull all this out and weld everything up good. But I like where that sits. I know this is not a real Ducati. I’m just having fun with it. If I had a real Ducati, I sure the hell wouldn’t chop it up to make an ebike out of it. But I wanted the bike to be unique and cool and look different, be inspired by a couple of my favorite things. A World Super Bike and Moto GP. Nothing’s cooler than a 996 in World Superbike racing. And what better way to represent that than slap some 996 fairings on the perfect donor bike. And I do call the Suzuki Bandit one of the perfect donor bikes. It’s got that big square frame. The engine sticks out on the sides on both sides to make it look cool for the cruiser class. That lends itself to having a fairly narrow frame. It’s a steel frame that a battery can set in fairly easily. It’s got sport bike ergonomics, still comfortable to cruise on. And you can find these Bandits in 600 cc’s and 1200 cc’s, and they are clapped out and ridden, but you can get them for pretty darn cheap. Like I said, 200 bucks for this one, tidle and all, and it’s a pretty clean frame. This is a gear reduction motor, so there’s some math involved. Who the hell knows how fast it’s going to go? I don’t even know how to do the math. 0 to 15,000 RPM. A far driver will only take you to 12,000 RPM. A far driver race model will take you to 15,000 RPM. I’ve got to calculate the RPM after the gear reduction and then to the final drive. I think I’ll make a whole video on how to do this is how to get your gearing right, what size sprockets I need to make this work. And sure, you can gear it for 500 m hour, but you’re never going to take off. The motor won’t have the power to even accelerate. Or you could gear it for 40 m an hour and the motor would have so much power it would just wheelie over or burn out. When you’re talking about a one gear motorcycle, you need to find a happy medium. Something that’s peppy on the takeoff and quick, but still has some good top speed. How do you even figure that out? That’s going to be one of the videos. Got a lot of the garbage cut off the rear end here. Kind of trying to streamline it. I’ve got the fairings fit on. I think the donor chassis are set up pretty good to start moving on now. So, the next phase I need to do a lot of wiring. Headlights, tail lights, horns, blinkers, brake lights. Wire something to a pump. This is a water cooled engine. Got to have a radiator. a lot of a lot of wiring. Maybe I’ll make a video on just the wiring cuz this is a harness from scratch. This bike had no wiring on it. Ignition switch, relays, brake switches. I can probably start ordering the battery. I know what size I need. Now, I had a pretty good idea of the size I wanted when I put these fairings on. So, I made the fairings a little bit wider than a Ducati would have. And after I get the radiator fit in there, I’m going to know exactly what’ll fit for a battery. And I’ll make that order. That battery is a long wait. We all know. I already got the brakes. They work good. New pads, red paint. What more do you want? Got the hardware all done. The mounts are nice and solid. Shouldn’t be an issue. So, that’s just an update on my full-size donor bike. We’ll see how this project goes.
Using a Suzuki Bandit donor frame to make a Ducati sportbike looking eBike
