Aprilia RSV1127 SBK

This is an attempt to make a REAL race-bike. Take all the things you think is not good enough and make them better. The first thing to be improved is of course the engine, it lacks power but is very nice to handle, no dips or peaks when using an aftermarket exhaust and fuel-tuning as PCIIIusb. Bone stock engine makes on our dyno 129bhp and 99Nm. The numbers themselves doesn't say that much but we will come back to them later when we dyno the bike again and see what the different parts add to the power. We will also change some parts on the chassi, suspension, brakes and of course a complete MoTeC management system with many features only seen on WSBK and MotoGP bikes.

Engine

"There's no replacement for displacement" as one famous american once said. What it means is that the bigger the better, a bigger displacement engine always makes more power the a smaller engine if they are tuned the same way. So with those words of wisdom the first issue had to be getting more displacement. Here we made a small compromise, we made as big bore as we could so it also could be used for every other RSV owner out there. We have a larger desing ready but with the limiting size of the intake valves it would be a lot of work for not the amount of gain that the larger displace could make if intakevalves could increased, "SpoonValley Racing's 1127cc BigBore kit" was born. So with a larger displacement and an increased compression ratio the base-line was layed down. As safety for the calculated power-increase we also installed Carrillo rods and let Falicon in California US make a Supercrank treatment with a re-balancing of the crank assembly since the Carrillo rods are pretty much lighter than stock rods. After that we let Microblue Racing make a coating on crank-assembly, race-cams, camchain, followers and pistons with rings and pins.

Here is a list of parts and services that is going in our race-engine.

Suspension and chassi

The stock suspension is actually pretty good on the Factory Aprilia, it's Öhlins parts all through. There is only one thing that is really bad from the get-go and that is the rear shock. The shock itself is not that bad but the position of the rebound adjuster is not optimal, it's located at the bottom of the shock As you know the rear cylinder header is just beside the shock, and where you are supposed to adjust the rebound it goes inte the collector and the heat produced there means that you can't adjust the rebound without burning your hands. But before burning your hands you have take off the bottom fairing to actually get to the bottom end of the shock, not a good design. There is also another thing that is not so good about the shock, since the gas-chamber is close to the header it heats up fast and changes the setting of the shock after some laps, not good. We decided to improve this, after some discussion with MN-Racing we ended up with probebly the only shock in the world with separate gas AND pre-load adjuster for the RSV1000R.

Joining the TTX36 shock is of course our Ultra Linear Linkage, this combination will improve the handling of both shock and bike.

Triple trees

The geometry of the bike is, as every production bike, a compromise. It works for both road and track but for the track there is some things that could be improved. When searching for the optimum setting for a specific track or just making the bike as you want, the geometry of the triple tree is often not changed, mainly because it is a major investment to get an adjustable triple tree. Not so many make adjustable trees for the RSV1000 but they exist. So, why change the offset? What does it do? The offset of the trees combined with the steering angle determines the trail. Larger trail=more stability but it can also make the bike slower to turn. Less trial=less stability but can also make the feel fast to turn in corners. This is a huge generalisation, there is so many things going into the stability of the bike. The trail also changes with the lean angle, braking, accelaration and weight shifting. We have changed from stock 33,5mm offset to a moderate 28mm.

Front fork

What happens to the front fork is not yet decided, it works pretty good at the club-level that we use the bike but this will be updated, be sure of that. With increased speed comes new problems, we'll fix it then.

Brakes

BrakeTech is our partner when it comes to discs, they have an outstanding way of transfer the brake-power from the disc to the rotor. Because the disc is directly coupled with the rotor and the floater buttons only hold the disc in place, this becomes a REAL full-floater with extrem feel. On our dry set of wheels we have the AXIS/Iron SBK-spec full-floaters in the 320mm x 6.5mm narrow-band configuration. On the rain wheels we have the AXIS/Cobra™ series extreme performance stainless steel rotors. The Brembo M4 calipers was chosen because they are a narrowband design and pads are easy to find. Ferodo ZRAC pads was recomended by BrakeTech, why change that?

To end up the brake section we use the Brembo RCS19 master and RCS16 as the clutch master.

Electronics

This section is the biggest change to our RSV1000, yes the engine mods are many but the electronics is THE major upgrade. Stock electronics does nothing besides running the engine and showing some conventional data on the dash like engine temp, revs and so on. The new system is designed around a MoTeC M800 ecu and a SDL3 dash/logger. These two units communicates thru a CAN system and the dash can do calculations that the ecu can use for adjusting power depending of the situation. The MoTeC units are completely open to the user and it can be programmed to do everything you would need on a race-bike.

Our system features