750 Sport

[Pedro]

Not Monster but close.....

A mate of a mate has just returned from the USA (Pennsylvania) with some extra luggage!! He's brought back a 2001 750 Sport which is a half faired SS with Dark paintwork.

Having gone through the rigmarol of registering it here, he's wondering if there are any differences in US spec motors compared to European, especially as most petrol in the US appears to be a lower Octane rating (he thinks 83 - 85Ron).

Does anyone know if US Dukes run a lower compression ratio or different timing etc to cope with this fuel?

Ta

Ped

[Byron Kauffman]

Hi Pedro;

The 82-83 octane is the lowest available but not the only octane rating available in the US. There are several levels higher at every station and race fuel is available at select stations. You can always smell the good stuff when you are behind the guys running big V8 muscle cars and hot rods.

From talking to friends that work on Ducatis, they are the same internally.
The 750 Dark model Ducati is the entry level bike here. It has less bolt-on type features like no solo seat cover but other than that it is the same as yours.

[slob]

Not Monster but close.....He's brought back a 2001 750 Sport which is a half faired SS with Dark paintwork.
post a photo, sounds excellent

[PaulS]

I would go along with what Byron says, after all he's a native so should know the situation. I think some confusion has crept in because they use a slightly different index to rate petrol (gasoline) in the US. We use RON, there is another index MON, and the values put on US pumps are an average [(MON+RON)/2] of the two (known as AKI) which leads to a lower value on the pump. There appear to be three grades generally available in the US - regular (around 87AKI), plus (around 89AKI) and premium (around 93AKI). These values vary according to brand and apparently can also vary for the same brands in different states. Our regular unleaded is generally 95RON and super 97RON (Optimax is 98RON). As far as I can tell 87AKI approximates to about 92RON, 89AKI to 94RON and 93AKI to 98RON (these are not accurate comparisons as the mapping will vary between examples and are only intended as a guide). According to the manual for the 750 Sport (including US versions) it should be run on 95RON to 98RON fuel. There is no indication that the US version is tuned differently (e.g. having the ignition timing retarded to allow the use of lower octane fuel). Even if this was the case there shouldn't be a problem running the bike on (slightly) higher octane fuel than before.

[Pedro]

Cheers guys!

I'll pass on your comments to my mate!!

Ped