We are off and running with our 2017 KTM 1290 Super Duke R Pikes Peak International Hill Climb racer!
It’s seven weeks out from the green light at 2017 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and we can finally say we have started the project in earnest.
This time last year we had our KTM 1290 Super Duke R built three months ago, using the last couple of months before the race to fine tune the set up and get the bike feeling like I wanted. This year, however, the project is being crammed into just over a month, as the bikes must be ready to be shipped to Colorado at the end of May.
The reason for the delay came down to the Super Duke being all new for 2017 (click here for our launch report from Qatar). When I built my racer last year, the bike we used was a 2015 model so getting bikes, parts, time etc was never an issue. The 2017 Super Dukes have only just arrived in the U.S., (as in last week arrived), and we still don’t have all the parts required to race at Pikes, but we are getting there.
Tom Moen and my teammate Chris Fillmore at KTM have been on the front foot as far as getting parts together for the two racebikes, so this past week we set about turning our streetbikes into mountain racers and getting a much-needed day on Thursday at Chuckwalla to test tires and get some suspension dialed in.
One thing I’m constantly amazed with when it comes to motorcycles is just how much work you must do to get them into a race-able state. It’s hours of little things—changing exhausts, drilling and lock wiring what seems like hundreds of bolts, sending suspension off—and that’s before we’d even turned a wheel on the 2017 machines.
Chris and I had each other and his old HMC Superbike Chief Tech, Ulrich Toporsch, for a day and a half, so we ripped into our 2017 Super Dukes by removing anything that didn’t need to be there like number plate holders, rear seat cowls, mirrors, mufflers, exhausts and footpegs. Tom Moen had delivered a couple of large boxes of KTM PowerParts, so on went new rearsets, rear seat cover, WP steering damper, 320mm wave brake discs, full Akrapovic titanium exhaust and muffler, and the suspension was sent to WP to have their race cartridge kit fitted to the forks and the rear shock swapped out for the WP PowerParts version with a 190Nm spring fitted.
At this stage, the forks are mounted in the standard black triple clamps because the orange PowerParts triples for the 2017 model are not in the U.S. yet, and are slightly different than the 2016 bike. To fit a 2016 lower triple to the 2017 bike, we’d have to machine up a junction to run the brake hose over the front of the triple, rather than through the center. It doesn’t bother me either way which triple we use in terms of performance, but the orange one does look super cool.
The bike will look different from these photos when it comes to race time because we’ve once again teamed up with Airtech Streamlining in San Diego, who are going to be making up a new front number board and belly pan that will be the same you’ll be able to buy should you want to race a Super Duke yourself.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the old Super Duke number board set up. It’s a weird looking design and doesn’t go with the rest of the bike, so I’m happy this new Airtech version will look almost identical to the streetbike. The belly pan should be like last year’s bike, but will hopefully mount a little higher and not scrap when we hit the big G-outs that litter the mountain circuit.
We managed to get the Super Dukes assembled to a track day standard late on Wednesday night (May 3), loading up the KTM Sprinter and driving down to Chuckwalla for a day in the searing heat on Thursday.
It’d been a while since I’d ridden in anger. Buttonwillow in March was my last hit out on my 2015 Super Duke and racetrack testing (of which I’ve done a lot lately), isn’t the same as giving it the full nuts on a Super Duke racebike—and against Chris Fillmore!
A nicer guy you couldn’t possibly meet, Fillmore has been instrumental in not just this project but also last year’s efforts, helping me develop the bike into a fast, reliable steed capable of doing well at Pikes. He’s now my teammate for this year (eek), but it’s great to try and learn off a guy who’s been at the pointy end of AMA Pro Racing for over a decade.
Chuckwalla was all about blowing off the cobwebs and getting a feel for the new bikes, changing suspension and riding set-ups and getting the bikes feeling right. The guys at WP gave us a good base setting for the new shock and cartridge kit forks, so it was more a matter of fine tuning rather than massive changes.
My initial feeling is I’d like the bike a bit higher in the rear as I feel like the bike sits a bit too flat. I’d like the bike more on its nose for sharper cornering. We will also be changing the seat to a full race seat which is taller by about an inch, so I’ll see if that makes a difference during the initial testing at Pikes. We have a week to get these things right before the green light goes out, but the set-up is already pretty good straight out of the box.
I also spent the day evaluating the soft compound SC1 Pirelli and Metzeler Racetec K1 tires that I have to choose from for the race. I raced the Pirellis last year and have no problem at all with them—they have exceptional early wear grip, with plenty of feel to match. The Mezeler’s were similar in that they did offer excellent early grip but the performance dropped off a little earlier compared to the Pirellis. This is next to elementary, however, due to two reasons. One is that the race is only 12 miles long, and two is the track conditions are going to be nothing like the 105 degrees we endured at Chuckwalla that Thursday.
Still, it was nice to feel the difference between the two in somewhat similar conditions, although it was a bit hotter when I had the Metzelers on, so that might explain the performance drop off.
We’ve still got a way to go before this thing is ready to take on the mountain but a week of solid work under our belts is beginning to show some results. Once the bike is finished and ready to go we’ll be checking back in to show our new baby off!
Track photography by David Swarts/Road Racing World
