Editing Ducati 900SS Final Edition

{{Infobox Motorcycle
|name             = [[Ducati]] 900SS Final Edition
|image            = [[File:Ducati-900SS-97--3.jpg|frameless|Ducati 900SS Final Edition]]
|aka              = 
|manufacturer     = Ducati
|parent_company   =
|production       = 800 Units
|model_year       =
|predecessor      =
|successor        =
|class            =
|engine           = Four stroke, 90°Ltwin cylinder, SOHC, desmodromic 2 valves per cylinder, belt driven
|bore_stroke      =
|compression      = 9.2:1
|top_speed        = 219.4 km/h / 136.3 mph
|power            =
|torque           =
|fuel_system      =
|ignition         = Kokusan electronic inductive discharge
|spark_plug       = Champion RA6HC
|battery          = 12V 16Ah
|transmission     = 6 Speed
|frame            =
|suspension       =Front: 41 mm Showa GD 021 fully adjustable inverted fork <br>
Rear: Progressive type with adjustable Showa GD monoshock
|brakes           =Front: 2 x 320 mm discs <br>Rear: Single 245 mm disc
|front_tire       = {{tire|120/70-17}} 
|rear_tire   	  = {{tire|170/60-17}} 
|rake_trail       =
|wheelbase        = 1410 mm / 55.5 in
|length           =
|width            =
|height           =
|seat_height      = 780mm / 30.7in
|dry_weight       = 183 kg / 403 lbs
|wet_weight       = 192.5 kg / 424 lbs
|fuel_capacity    = 17.5 L / 4.6 US gal / 3.8 Imp gal
|oil_capacity     =
|fuel_consumption =
|turning_radius   =
|related          =
|competition      =
}}

It could reach a top speed of 219.4 km/h / 136.3 mph.  

==Engine==
The engine was a Air cooled cooled Four stroke, 90°Ltwin cylinder, SOHC, desmodromic 2 valves per cylinder, belt driven. The engine featured a 9.2:1 [[compression ratio]].  

==Drive==
Power was moderated via the Dry, multiplate.  

==Chassis==
It came with a 120/70-17 front [[tire]] and a 170/60-17 rear tire. Stopping was achieved via 2 x 320 mm discs in the front and a Single 245 mm disc in the rear. The front suspension was a  41 mm Showa GD 021 fully adjustable inverted fork while the rear was equipped with a Progressive type with adjustable Showa GD monoshock. The 900SS Final Edition was fitted with a 17.5 L / 4.6 US gal / 3.8 Imp gal fuel tank. The bike weighed just 183 kg / 403 lbs. The wheelbase was 1410 mm / 55.5 in long.  
== Photos ==
[[File:Ducati-900SS-97--3.jpg|600px|Ducati 900SS Final Edition]]
[[File:Ducati-900SS-98.jpg|600px|Ducati 900SS Final Edition]]
[[File:Ducati-900SS-FE.jpg|600px|Ducati 900SS Final Edition]]

== Overview ==

Ducati 900SS Final Edition

















The FE stands for 'Final Edition', and the 900SS FE was a
last special production run of the old carburettor-equipped SS before it was
replaced in 1998. Based around the 900SS Superlight, the FE had special
cosmetics, a tuned engine, and elegant chassis changes. The special silver
single-seat bodywork was wrapped around a modified engine, with race-style
high-level exhaust pipes. The front brakes have cast-iron racing discs and
the black wheels are lightweight. A carbon-fibre clock surround, chainguard,
mudguard and body panels complete the high spec. The FE's performance was
only slightly improved over the standard bike, and it was really intended as
a special celebration of the old model. Only 800 were produced.

Limited to just 300 bikes in North America, the 900SS FE
is the last of the 2nd generation SuperSports to be produced by the Bologna
factory.

Based on the 900SS SP, the FE comes dressed in elegant silver bodywork and
black wheels, with carbon fiber rear fender, dashboard cover, and
countershaft drive cover. A solo (monoposto) seat completes the stunning
visual impression.

But there's more than just skin deep beauty in the FE.

To back up the race-bred look, a few additional changes have been made as
well. The exhaust pipes have been raised to provide improved cornering
clearances. New cast iron floating brake rotors have been fitted with remote
reservoirs and adjustable levers. New cylinders, alternator, and voltage
regulator have been added. The resulting combination will assure that the
thrill of the ride matches the beauty of the machine.
To further secure it's place in the DUCATI legacy, the top triple clamp of
each FE will be fitted with a consecutively numbered commemorative plaque.
There will be no doubt as to the special position the FE will assume in the
heritage of the most sought after sport motorcycles in the world.

Road Test
It's good, it's fantastico. When it's bad,
who cares?
For some of us (and we know who we are...) it is as certain as sunrise and
more compelling than Estate Java . 6:00 a.m. It is a certain triumph of
desmodromics over reason, and it happens every morning Slide into the
monopdsto saddle. Contemplate the plaque on the upper triple clamp, exalting
the attached Ducati as the 48th of only 300 platinum-silver Final Edition
900 Super Sport Ducatis ever coined. Say a little prayer for the engineering
genius of one Ing. Fabio Taglioni, from whose frontal lobes sprang the
internal-combustion elegance upon which you are about to roost.


The eappuecino-maker hum/ gurgle from somewhere
within the fuel tank might unsettle the average Saturn-owning, low-fat/high-fiber-ingesting,
"rational" human. We just think it's cool. We're fine with the silver Duck's
cantankerous starting ritual too. Even warm mornings. Even with the new carb
heaters, we know the air-cooled, desmo-due twin demands full-choke, followed
by half-choke, followed by much positive thinking and an attentive throttle
hand before 'the internal-combustion process begins in earnest. We turn a
deaf ear on percussive pops and coughs from the airbox. We ignore a stiff
clutch-pull and a near-stadium-sized turning radius that rakes knuckles
against fairing exiting the driveway.

The aforementioned Saturn-owning neighbors
witness the spit-cough-stall morning ritual. They question our sanity and
yet we care not. To own this motorcycle is to be a master of creative
rationalization.
To those who willingly suffer "modern"
indignities like Windows 95, automatic transmissions and white zinfandel,
the Ducati's dysfunctional behaviors are flaws. To once and future Ducatisti,
they're simply the undeniable signatures of the 900SS's purosangue persona:
a small price to pay for the pure sporting brilliance that will flow like a
Verdi aria through the first set of curves.
Underneath all the Final Edition pomp, circumstance and new paint, what you
have, really, is a 900SS SP.

That monoposto saddle comes from the fabled 1992
900 Superlight, as do the high-mount mufflers. Sharp eyes will notice a new
fairing duct designed to aim air at the rear cylinder. Mechanical changes
for 1998 are minor. There's a new 520-watt alternator and matching voltage
regulator. New cylinder castings route hot oil from the heads back to the
engine's wet sump via internal oil-return galleries instead of the old
external lines. Deeper finning is news on the motor's exterior. New pistons
fitted with more durable rings reside within, though status quo 92.0 x
68.0mm bore and stroke dimensions add up to the time-honored 904cc total
(the same as the new fuel-injected engine inside the reborn 900SS slated to
surface late this summer).
The investment value of one-in-300 exclusivity
remains to be seen. Most everything else about the FE is blue-chip to anyone
familiar with the 900SS that opened to U.S. audiences late in '91. The
essence of what your $10,999 buys now has changed little from what $8490
bought back then.
One look at the FE sunning itself among the latest crop of Ducati-inspired
sporting twins from Honda and Suzuki explains the Final Edition badge. Lines
that are classic to some are just plain old to everybody else. Compared with
the latest tack, this old boy is going a little gray around the temples. A
little soft in the gums. You get the picture.
For any soulless infidels in the audience who
still don't understand why Chianti lives under a cork instead of a threaded
cap, we'll cut to the chase. Will Honda's Super Hawk or Suzuki's TL1000S
beat any off-the-shelf SS through your favorite set of curves? Like a gong.
Is it fast? Tripping the quarter-mile timing lights at 11.88 seconds and
110.10 miles per hour, not particularly.
Tall gearing lets the venerable mill fairly loaf
along at freeway speeds in sixth gear,
easily squeezing 50 miles from a gallon of super unleaded and 180 miles from
a 4.6-gallon tankful. The low-fuel light usually wakes up between 155 and
170 miles, but it's dim enough to disappear in broad daylight. There's no
reserve tap, so don't say we didn't warn you. Seventy miles per hour on the
optimistic, white-faced Veglia speedo translates to a lazy 3700 rpm on the
matching tach.
Conspiring with the 90-degree "L" twin's perfect
primary balance, that tall gearing makes for a fairly smooth freeway ride.
The narrow, thinly padded solo seat gets on your nether nerves after 100
miles. Shaky mirrors turn trailing traffic into a blurry mess, the dry
clutch is a stiff pull at the lever and gets grabby in tight traffic. Stiff
suspension will whip your liver to pate after an hour's worth of diabolical
freeway expansion joints. So?
The Final Edition, its fathers and even its
bevel-driven desmo grandfathers stand guilty on all counts. Yet, for some at
least, it just doesn't matter. Once the engine actually warms up, subliminal
messages carefully engineered into the EPA-emasculated exhaust note can warp
even the most rational Yankee thought patterns. "I am descended from
Spaggiari and am secretly faster than Fogarty...supermodels undress me with
their eyes...size doesn't matter..."
Initial symptoms are as unmistakable as they are irreversible. You enunciate
"Dainese" correctly without thinking and know instinctively that "Ing." is
short for ingegnere. What's worse, you really can spell it. Gated Ferrari
shifters, mesh designer briefs and Barbie-sized espresso cups start to make
sense. It is the advanced symptoms that are most frightening. Start
punctuating telephone conversations with "Ciao" and you're well past the
point of rescue.
Call it irrational. Call it delusional, but
beware. Any nonlinear-thinking, creative-type human mind is susceptible to
the desmo's aural brainwashing. Flaws become character. Freeways and
constipated surface streets submerge beneath the Ducati's sporting dignity,
and all that matters is tracing as many gnarly little
lines on the map as the weekend will allow.

Toss it back and forth between your knees at a
stoplight and the 900 feels lighter, skinnier, stubbier and stiffer than
Honda's VTR or Suzuki's TL because it is: 22 pounds lighter than the Honda
and 19 pounds lighter than the Suzuki. Tossing it into a decreasing-radius
left requires a healthy push on the narrow, overly rear-swept handlebars.
Still, progress from straight-up to cranked-over happens in a hurry once you
learn how. Two clues:
There's not much weight to push, and the lissome Italian remains marvelously
responsive to body English. The flip side of somewhat high-effort steering
is exemplary stability. Once cranked in, the FE locks on to the designated
trajectory like a slot car.
The power flowing from 4000-7500 rpm is more remarkable in usable quality
than sheer quantity. Long intake runners leading to two-valve heads are
biased toward torque over peaky power. In stock trim, the SS begins running
out of breath at 7700 rpm, and spinning it past eight grand is a waste.
Alas, the 900's strength lives in the midrange. Even the diabolically
snarled little lines on the map won't require more than a trip or two to the
decisive, light-shifting, six-speed gearbox. True enough. More powerful VTR
or TL twins will drop the FE like a bad habit in any corner-to-corner
sprint. When the going heats up, the Ducati holds its own with scorching
corner speed.
Those pukka, highboy mufflers squelch more desmo
exhaust music than they should, but they also tuck in well enough to let you
feather the plenty-sticky D204 Sportmax radials to the edges. The
marvelously stiff trellis steel frame remains an elegantly effective
alternative to fat slabs of extruded aluminum. It also makes most engine
maintenance chores a whole lot easier once the fairing is peeled away.
Springs are stiffer at both ends than analogous Japanese twins, and there's
enough feedback to let you know precisely what's happening at the contact
patches.
Perhaps too precisely. Over relatively smooth,
well-kept tarmac, that unfiltered road feedback lets you carve corners like
a sharp knife through prosciutto. But on the El Nino-ravaged California
backroads for which our FE yearns, its suspenders lack the damping
sophistication of those under something like Suzuki's latest GSX-R750.
Midcorner bumps rattle the silver Duck's composure and yours for a second,
but the full 4.0 inches of trail figured into the steering geometry to
buffer a relatively steep 25-degree rake calms things down almost as quickly
in most cases. A full arsenal of compression, rebound and spring preload
adjusters lets anyone with simple hand tools and some working knowledge of
suspension tune in a precise sporting ride, but not a plush one.
"Plush is for weaklings, capisce?" Stiff springs
and aggressive damping rates mean the Duck is happiest going fast on
relatively smooth pavement. Even on the smoothest, fastest stuff, quad-pot
Brembo rotors and
320mm, cast-iron floating calipers up front mean there's no shortage of
braking power. The 900's trademark spongy feel remains, making precise
modulation of all that power a little tricky until you get the feel for it
or pony up for steel braided lines.
Good, bad or indifferent, the desmo's narcotic effect on the human psyche
makes "stock Ducati" an oxymoron on the order of "political ethics." Does
this 900's limited-production status make hotting it up the mechanical
equivalent of airbrush-ing extra cleavage on Mona Lisa?

That would be up to you. Ask any Ducatisti
worthy of the tag about the 900's modest herd of ponies. "Sure it's not so
fast now, but just bolt up some carbs and cams, high-compression pistons and
an exhaust system and you'll be saying 'ciao' to those Oriental twins in no
time."

There lies the difference. Straddle the FE or
any Ducati and one thing is instantly clear: You're straddling something
produced by passionate flesh and blood more than CAD/CAM software and
marketing focus groups. Still don't get it? Here's a simple test.
If you've come this far and still figure anybody
who would lay out 11-large for an aging, 70-horse, air-cooled twin should be
measured for an Armani strait-jacket, perhaps you should unscrew the top on
some 1998 white zinfandel and ogle air bags in a Saturn brochure.
But if personality is more important than perfection, if the sound of desmo-cued
valves opening and closing in rapid lockstep conjures up a fuzzy,
black-and-white image of Mike Hailwood on Quarter Bridge at the Isle of Man
or Bruno Spaggiari at Imola, you've got
it bad. The bad news is, there is no cure for what you have. But the good
news is, the treatment regimen can be habit-forming. Apply one silver Ducati
twin to twisty roads. Repeat as necessary. GQ
Source 1998 MOTORCYCLIST
{|  class="wikitable"
|- 
!Make Model
|Ducati 900 SS Final Edition
|- 
!Year
|1998
|- 
!Production
|800 Units
|- 
!Engine Type
|Four stroke, 90°Ltwin cylinder, SOHC, desmodromic 2 valves per cylinder, belt driven
|- 
!Displacement
|904 cc / 55.2 cu in
|- 
!Bore X Stroke
|92 x 68 mm
|- 
!Compression
|9.2:1
|- 
!Cooling System
|Air cooled
|- 
!Induction
|Mikuni BDST 38-B67
|- 
!Spark Plug
|Champion RA6HC
|- 
!Ignition
|Kokusan electronic inductive discharge
|- 
!Battery
|12V 16Ah
|- 
!Starting
|Electric
|- 
!Max Power
|61.8 kW / 84 hp @ 7000 rpm (rear tyre 53.7 kW / 73hp @ 8100 rpm)
|- 
!Max Torque
|84 Nm / 8.6 kgf-m / 62 ft-lb @ 6400 rpm
|- 
!Clutch
|Dry, multiplate
|- 
!Transmission
|6 Speed
|- 
!Primary Drive Ratio
|1.84:1 (32/59)
|- 
!Gear Ratios
|1st 2.466 / 2nd 1.764 / 3rd 1.350 / 4th 1.091 / 5th 0.958 / 6th 0.857:1
|- 
!Final Drive Ratio
|2.466:1 (15/37)
|- 
!Final Drive
|Chain
|- 
!Front Suspension
|41 mm Showa GD 021 fully adjustable inverted fork
|- 
!Front Wheel Travel
|120 mm / 4.7 in
|- 
!Rear Suspension
|Progressive type with adjustable Showa GD monoshock
|- 
!Rear Wheel Travel
|125 mm / 4.9 in
|- 
!Front Brakes
|2 x 320 mm discs
|- 
!Rear Brakes
|Single 245 mm disc
|- 
!Front Tire
|120/70-17
|- 
!Rear Tire
|170/60-17
|- 
!Dry Weight
|183 kg / 403 lbs
|- 
!Rake
|25o
|- 
!Trail
|104 mm / 4.1 in
|- 
!Dimensions
|Length: 2020 mm / 79.5 in Width: 710 mm / 28.0 in Height: 1110 mm / 43.7 in
|- 
!Wheelbase
|1410 mm / 55.5 in
|- 
!Seat Height
|780mm / 30.7in
|- 
!Wet Weight
|192.5 kg / 424 lbs
|- 
!Fuel Capacity
|17.5 L / 4.6 US gal / 3.8 Imp gal
|- 
!Consumption Average
|5.7 L/100 km / 17.5 km/l / 41.2 US mpg / 49.4 Impmpg
|- 
!Braking 60 Km/h - 0
|13.3 m / 43.6 ft
|- 
!Braking 100 Km/h - 0
|38.8 m / 127.3 ft
|- 
!Standing ¼ Mile
|11.8 sec / 177.7 km/h / 110.4 mph
|- 
!Top Speed
|219.4 km/h / 136.3 mph
|- 
!Colours
|Gold frame, silver
|- 
!Manual
|Bevelheaven.com

|}
== External Links ==
* http://www.bevelheaven.com/manual-index.htm

[[Category:Ducati motorcycles]]