23/03/2024
So another troublesome European V-twin, this time something so rare its believed to be the only one in existence, Bimota’s Supercharged DB11VLX.
In 2012 Bimota had an idea to supercharge their Ducati 1198 engined DB11, its believed 2 were built but only this one survived but was forgotten about until a couple of years ago where it was discovered albeit missing a load of bits.
We first saw it early last year when the Bimota logo’s AIM dash/ logger needed wiring/ configuring, a simple job complicated by their being no workshop manuals or wiring diagrams as the bike never made it to production, for example there was no oil pressure warning as the space where the switch should fit was taken up by the supercharger hardware, we had an adaptor fabricated into the oil lines & a motorsport spec 10 bar sensor fitted so we don’t just have a warning but actual oil pressure in psi & bar.
With the dash working it was back to BSD in Peterborough where on the dyno it was obvious the bike had mechanical issues, they rebuilt the engine but soon realised the bikes standard Athena ECU & a Power Commander weren’t going to cut it in order to get it running properly, so back to us for a solution.
We’ve fitted an SCS Delta 900 ECU, then mapped each cylinder & finished by installing two wideband lambda sensors & are running it on close loop fueling to keep everything safe. The new ECU required a complete rewire but not to look new as the owner wanted it “to still look like a 10 year old prototype”.
The Delta 900 with it's CAN protocol will “talk” directly with the AIM dash so every sensor the ECU uses we can monitor/ log, on the dyno it became clear the cause of the first engines issue were high intake air temperatures (an unwanted by-product of compressing the intake air), after only a couple of ¾ throttle dyno runs the intake air temps rise to 80 degrees and keep going, we’ve had to offset this with very safe high load fueling and ignition timing.
Ideally the bike needs a cooler for the charge air but there is simply no space and it would take the bike away from what Bimota originally intended, rumour has it that they did get this one running, it did a couple of laps of the Milan ring road but surged, stalled, wouldn’t restart and was generally horrible to ride, this bike now starts hot or cold, idles & rides beautifully, perfect for the odd spin out or parade lap.
It's been our most challenging project but finally it's as good as it's going to get.
