Who knows more about this frankenduc?

There was a pretty detailed write up on it in Cycle if I remember correctly back then. It was Xr350 or XR400 heads grafted on. Custom pistons, etc.

I don't think they ever got it really sorted out. The RFVC head is a bit of a contraption and I'm going to guess it wasn't well suited for the engine speeds they would have needed. And then the 851 appeared.

Hi Geoff, the bike you mention was called the 'DuDa' and that was Erion Racings bike. It didn't work from what I understand and was eventually parted out. I think our own Cranky roller has the beam frame that housed the motor ( although he will probably deny all knowledge of it LOL). The Duconda used the RSC 600 heads which were race only heads if not mistaken. The Duconda was also fuel injected and created quite a bit of power, in the broken crankshaft sense. I think they finally found that they could use an 851 crankshaft to eliminate that problem. I also think that is a replica f1 frame they built to house the motor. I was going to answer this post tonight at home because I think I have more info on this interesting machine. It was for sale some years back on ebay and the seller wrote an interesting history about the bike. I will try to find it and post in tonight. Lou

I saw this at daytona in 1990. The (then) owner and his mate who built the engine drove across non stop in shifts across from the Californian coast. 52 hours total. No wonder they didn't have the stamina left to iron out the bugs. I spoke at length to the engineer who went to great lengths not to weld anything at all when modifying all the engine bits. I have some pics of the engine build he gave me at the time but little hope of finding them just now because of the move to NZ.

Hi Guy's, here is the ebay ad for the Duconda. Sorry for the poor quality. It didn't sell because I didn't have the money! I hope Cranky Roller will write a bit about the DuDa. Lou

HI Geoff, you were correct different bikes but still an Erion connection to both machines. Lou

Pretty neat and a nice write up by that ebay seller. Who has it now? Still with the guy in Ashland?

Not that I'm in the market, but if you had the time and money, it would be interesting to see if the bottom end is fixed. And what fails next...

The DuDa used a British made Spondon frame. The bike was fast and handled well but had so many technical problems that Two Brothers Racing usually raced their modified F1. They won the championship on the F1b and then expected that they would receive some help/sponsorship from Ducati.

When that did not happen they started racing the Honda Hawk in the same series and developed a racing parts business for the Hawk.

I bought a bunch of Ducati F1 race take offs from their mechanic Dan Kyle back when I was restoring my F1b street-bike.
Dan now has his own business that does excellent suspension work: http://www.kyleusa.com/

I had him set up the Ohlins forks and shock on my Ducati Monster. He dyno's all of the Ohlins shock springs that he sells. I was amazed to see his setup that compresses the spring and then releases it, graphing the force verses length. He has found that more than 10% of the springs that Ohlins sends him are defective (not straight rate, or don't match the rate on the spring), and sends them back to Ohlins.
Ohlins sent the springs to a metal scrapper who was supposed to destroy them, but recognized them as motorcycle springs and put them for sale on ebay!

Nice too read such history!

Leave it to Lou to pull this hermit out of his cave to fill in some back round on the Du-Da. Having witnessed the original bike I believe that some of the information with the Duconda add is not quit right. The Du-da...short for a matting of Ducati lower end to the Honda upper end....was constructed over the winter of 1987-88 by Dan Kyle and Homer Knapp for Kevin Erions entry into the AMA Pro twins GP class. As mentioned in the article it had 600cc Honda flat track race heads grafted onto the lower of an F1. It ran in a Spondon frame with RS-250 bodywork. It never really got sorted when the Two Brothers team concentrated on winning the modified production class. The bike was sold off when they switched to Honda support in 89. The bike was sold to Dave Karten who raced it a handful of times but never overcoming its many teething problems. It was then partly disassembled and sold off again. I acquired the the chassis a few years ago along with the RS-250 gas tank with the telltale fuel injection plumbing inside. The Duconda came later and was a different bike. I do not know if the original Du-da motor was the base for this bike or a different one inspired by the Du-da.
-CRanky-