Just took home a 1299s

SlowJoe · Feb 23, 2020

I’ve been looking around at Pani’s for a while now and thought I wanted the 959. I’ve been riding dirt bikes for about 10 years and have always ridden KTM. With young kids, I hardly make it out to the desert so the dirt bikes had to go. Having an empty garage was driving me nuts so I pulled the trigger on a 1299s. I rode a 959 and it didn’t give me that wow factor I was looking for. After riding the 1299s, I was hooked and knew I’d be drooling every time I passed one.

That being said, I picked up the bike from a private dealer. They claimed it has a full Akro exhaust but I was dumb enough to skip out on research before I purchased (shame on me - first Duc) Now I’m not seeing the bluish tint that the titanium gives off and i’m a little upset. Anyways, I’m still excited to have a bike in the garage and look forward to a lot of good rides! The bike has 3k on it and is a 2017.

BDC76-AD1-5-ACD-4-B6-E-A9-AC-24-BAF56373-A7 hosted at ImgBB

Image BDC76-AD1-5-ACD-4-B6-E-A9-AC-24-BAF56373-A7 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

DStyleNZL · Feb 23, 2020

yeah it only has the AKra slip-ons.

Paul G · Feb 23, 2020

only ha ha, seems like you got a raw deal until you price a set of them!

SlowJoe · Feb 23, 2020

I’m pretty bummed about it at the moment. I’ll confront the dealer when I return from my business trip. They seemed like honest guys and I’m hoping it was just a mixup - they had quite a few 1299s in the showroom. I paid extra for the bike with the “full system” only to find out it wasn’t a full system upon detailing it at home...I’m heart broken!

Edit: I just looked through my files and saw they had the exhaust pictured on the bike. When I went to the showroom the first time it was for sure the full Akro exhaust. They gave me a great deal but seems as though they removed the exhaust before I picked it up. Not looking forward to involving my lawyer.

Paul G · Feb 23, 2020

Even if they dont come to the party, you got a great bike that will have more grunt than you know what to do with.

DucatiKev · Feb 23, 2020

Congrats on the bike, I’ll give u some advice later on when I have time.

will u be handling oil changes and some general maintenance yourself or will it be going to dealership for that

where r u located?

what give us a closeup of your exhaust Silencers and the exposed pieces of ur header manifold pipes

DucatiKev · Feb 23, 2020

I’m pretty sure they didn’t remove an exhaust that was on there to swap it out for an exhaust that wasn’t. That’s like a full days worth of master mechanic time. The bike comes fully apart and then hopefully goes fully back together
It’s probably just a different bike.

Your Akra “Racing Silencers” are still over $4,000 installed

If you’re keeping it and the exhaust is the first item on which you decide to unleash your OCD, you have a few options.

Order PART NO. 96481741AA
Install it yourself and blue it in or have your dealer do it

There are more options too; You could pull the lower fairing and sand down your rusted old exposed stainless steel header/manifold section. I sanded mine with 600 all the way up through 2000 and then polished it.

Before, during and after

After a few heat cycles:

Wipe with this:

ZEP 14 oz. Stainless Steel Polish ZUSSTL14 - The Home Depot

Protects stainless steel surfaces from soil and water spots

www.homedepot.com

or this:

Sprayway Stainless Steel Cleaner and Polish 15 ounce - Walmart.com

Buy Sprayway Stainless Steel Cleaner and Polish 15 ounce at Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

You might also consider lock wiring your butterfly valve open and removing the electronics associated with it.
Lastly, an ECU tune goes a long way with these bikes

SlowJoe · Feb 24, 2020

Hey Kev, thanks for the reply. At this point I’m over it. I already have enough stress in my life and figured this wasn’t worth my time. That polish job you did looks really clean! I’ll consider doing that in the future (probably my first project) the bike already sounds great and is loud enough for my kids/wife’s ears. I’m in going to sneak out early for a ride, it will already be hard enough! I’m in Orange County. What about yourself?

DucatiKev · Feb 24, 2020

Sweet, I’m down in sunny Venice Florida.

the next step is to pull the heat shield and polish the U-turn pipe under the seat

CrazyBikerr · Feb 26, 2020

Too much work, Kev. RMWL

I used to polish those headers on my I4 bikes a lot. Takes too much time out of riding, LOL

DucatiKev · Feb 26, 2020

CrazyBikerr said:
Takes too much time out of riding, LOL

That’s what I’m saying
I brought my bikes to Florida for the winter and the roads down here are pretty nice. I just got the [ - - - ] speed readout on the dash for the first time last night

Hawk · Feb 27, 2020

Congrats on the bike! If there is any positives about the bike you got its that it probably doesn't need tuned etc for the slip ons. I have the full DP Akra system on my bike and just went through quite a bit of headache and soul searching to get it tuned and running properly. There is a side of me that wishes it just had the slip-ons after the headaches. Friend of mine had full system installed with upmap and hated the factory maps and had to have it dynotuned which is just another pain in the butt.

The full system is crazy loud aswell especially without the silencers in. To be honest if you are just road riding the gains from the Full System are close to useless you aren't going to notice a couple more HP or the weight running 75Mph on the highway.

Your bike looks super clean enjoy it!

Phl · Feb 27, 2020

Congrats @SlowJoe

there's a guy in England (Phil Smith) - Storm Performance Fabrications - that builds race exhausts. he offers the lower link pipe out of titanium...

CrazyBikerr · Feb 27, 2020

Hawk said:
Congrats on the bike! If there is any positives about the bike you got its that it probably doesn't need tuned etc for the slip ons. I have the full DP Akra system on my bike and just went through quite a bit of headache and soul searching to get it tuned and running properly. There is a side of me that wishes it just had the slip-ons after the headaches. Friend of mine had full system installed with upmap and hated the factory maps and had to have it dynotuned which is just another pain in the butt.

The full system is crazy loud aswell especially without the silencers in. To be honest if you are just road riding the gains from the Full System are close to useless you aren't going to notice a couple more HP or the weight running 75Mph on the highway.

Your bike looks super clean enjoy it!

This is the dance that most have to do when they put full systems. The stock 1299 is the smoothest bikes I have ever ridden after the S1000RR/R/XR series. It needs nothing. People spend big $$$ ($2-4k) on full systems only to realize they lost low and midrange torque then need to spend more $$ on a Flash/controller/tune when they can't even utilize even 50% of the stock bike's potential. Don't fix what is not broken. I have done this dance on several Japanese bikes because they really needed it as they come neutered stock. Euro bikes, not so much.

DucatiKev · Feb 28, 2020

CrazyBikerr said:
This is the dance that most have to do when they put full systems. The stock 1299 is the smoothest bikes I have ever ridden after the S1000RR/R/XR series. It needs nothing. People spend big $$$ ($2-4k) on full systems only to realize they lost low and midrange torque then need to spend more $$ on a Flash/controller/tune when they can't even utilize even 50% of the stock bike's potential. Don't fix what is not broken. I have done this dance on several Japanese bikes because they really needed it as they come neutered stock. Euro bikes, not so much.

Many good points here. The 2020 S1000RR sees massive performance gains but tuning our beautiful Ducati’s doesn’t seem to provide huge gains. Maybe the V4R with exhaust and UpMap compared to stock

I do have my 1299 tubes and the benefit is that it seems to run cooler and it’s much more smooth than stock and with Akra UpMap. I was warned that the bike “knocks and bucks” which it did pretty bad, but not now that it’s tuned

Sometimes the power and weight reduction mods are like putting a cold air intake on a civic.
If you want your vehicle to be faster, buy a faster vehicle. Ducati SuperBikes are world class but if you want a 325HP bike, buy an H2, tune it and stretch it. You’ll blow me away on the highway and the cops won’t have chance.. not even will a new $100,000 V4 Superleggera have a chance

SlowJoe · Feb 28, 2020

Hawk said:
Your bike looks super clean enjoy it!

Thank you! I'm very excited for this new chapter. Long story short, I have the full Akro and it looks like it was put on not too long ago. I'm going to polish it and get a few heat cycles on this thing! I rode it yesterday and the blue is starting to surface!

Phl said:
Congrats @SlowJoe

Thanks! That lower looks like very nice work. When I get mine all polished up I'll send some pics over

DucatiKev · Feb 28, 2020

take a pic like this looking at your exhaust system from the right foot peg. I can almost see it in ur first pic

SlowJoe said:
I have the full Akro and it looks like it was put on not too long ago. I'm going to polish it and get a few heat cycles on this thing! I rode it yesterday and the blue is starting to surface!

SlowJoe · Feb 28, 2020

DucatiKev said:
take a pic like this looking at your exhaust system from the right foot peg. I can almost see it in ur first pic

Here’s a pic of the lettering I was able to get...such a hard angle to capture!
Also attached some fresh blueing after yesterday’s ride

DucatiKev · Feb 28, 2020

SlowJoe said:
Here’s a pic of the lettering I was able to get...such a hard angle to capture!
Also attached some fresh blueing after yesterday’s ride

Dude that looks like the factory stainless steel pipes. The give away is a flapper valve by where they go into the muffler. The Titanium ones don’t have the flapper valve at all

Phl · Feb 28, 2020

Yeah that’s stock stainless

Just took home a 1299s

Help Support Ducati Forum:

SlowJoe

BDC76-AD1-5-ACD-4-B6-E-A9-AC-24-BAF56373-A7 hosted at ImgBB

DStyleNZL

Paul G

SlowJoe

Paul G

DucatiKev

DucatiKev

ZEP 14 oz. Stainless Steel Polish ZUSSTL14 - The Home Depot

Sprayway Stainless Steel Cleaner and Polish 15 ounce - Walmart.com

SlowJoe

DucatiKev

CrazyBikerr

DucatiKev

Hawk

Phl

Moderator

CrazyBikerr

DucatiKev

SlowJoe

DucatiKev

SlowJoe

DucatiKev

Phl

Moderator

Similar threads

Register CTA

Recent Discussions