I don’t know where it ends, but once you start doing mods to your Ducati the journey seems to be a long and winding road. Which currently leads to Quickshifters. I have some bad influencers in my life ‘enabling’ my every desire to make my Hyper faster and faster (you know who you are) so here is a quick post on what I have found out so far.
I didn’t even know what they did when I started this journey, but since then have discovered that adding a quickshifter quite simply means you can change up gears, without using your clutch. FAST.
Adding a Quickshifter means that you can hold it at WOT and just blast up through the gears, and every change will be perfectly smooth and instant. The QS will momentarily (.05 of a second or something crazy like that) cut the engine, unloading the trans, allowing for a perfect upshift without any need to fan or use your clutch all.
There are some deal breakers for Ducati owners on some units as I understand it. You need to have a Power Commander 5 (PC5 or PCIII dependant on your model) installed from the engine management side of things if running their shifter. I guess it is all to do with the precision shifts and engine chops required that would be handled by the PC.
Some are inline and replace the shift linkage (difficult with forward set pegs and shifters on the hyper) and others simply add an additional switch to the gear shifter.
What it means in a practical sense, apart from going like a complete lunatic hoon in a straight line of course, is that you could upshift mid corner smoother, potentially without breaking traction…
What the QS means is faster shifts and faster shifts means speed. Speed is of course paramount on track days (something I’m not experienced in… yet), but also comes in handy when you are trying to get the milk several seconds faster than you did yesterday.
Most units are configurable as to what RPM they come into effect, for example you could set your QS to only work above 4500rpm meaning normal, casual short shifts do not cut the engine. Sounds like heaps of fun to me.