Those of you who were on the ducatisti site may remember this bike. I have had her for what seems like forever, but the date stamp in the pic reveals it is only 5 years ago. The bike was cheap, only just ran, and took me almost a year to get trackworthy(safe), but I have grown to love the bike, and although I have done literally nothing with it for at least two years I think about her every day. I will try to do a few posts over the next few weeks to try and cover the various changes/upgrades etc. that I made to the bike, and hopefully bring you up to date.
Although the bodywork was in far from good condition, it fetched a fair bit on Ebay, so I could purchase some fiberglass. The first set was very cheap, you can see it in the background in the first pic below, I cant remember where it was from but I wasn't very happy with it. The second set, from Skidmarx is much better quality, but I am still not entirely happy with it. For now at least it stays. The wiring was one of the first jobs on the list, theres a hell of alot of cable that you can junk if you have removed the road gear and lighting. And I also had a go at making a rear subframe. It would have been handy to have had a proper one to copy, the best I had at the time was a few photos in books and on google images. Tacked up:- I came across a genuine corsa carbon seat unit bracket which gave me some of the critical dimensions. Looks pretty good with the carbon bracket and just a cheapy carbon heat shield. I am really fighting with photobucket, my account is huge and I am finding it hard to sift through the images. I will probably do another update tomorrow.
I remember this well and would be interested to see what stage you are at now, I followed the original build-up avidly for quite a while on the old Ducatisti site, an inspiration. Best of luck.
Cheers guys. Most of this will be familiar, but I need to document it somewhere. The fuel tank was slightly modified, partly for looks, equally as much for convenience. The front was filled in, as I removed the steering lock and ignition switches. The breather was routed through the front too. You can see here also the clock bracket I made, but this was sold on years ago. The bike wears a translogic dash now. The fuel cap was a badly listed bargin from eBay too, and I quite like the design. The fuel pump assembly was altered too, I got rid of the breather and drain holes, and also got rid of the level sensor. Here you can see the standard item, with the broken qr. And finished. The vent and drain through ways are welded up, and tested. Then the whole thing is bead blasted. I might revisit this soon, as I reckon I can improve on this. I also made a replacement swirl pot. Very small.. And assembled, with the level sensor delete, but that's a whole other story in itself...
I should be able to take some photos and send them to you but all it is the low beam projector from the twin light set-up and a home made bracket. I don't ride at night so I don't need anything else it's just so people can see me during the day. The fairing is a fibreglass race fairing with a hole cut for the beam and the lens is a visor tear off glued to the back. I have this set-up on all my bikes and it works really well, saves a bit of weight and protects the original headlight. I do have to go back to standard for the MOT as I don't have a daytime MOT.
Cheers guys, I did indeed make the nut, or rather had it made as I only have a lathe, and would require a mill for the spanner flats. It turns out theres a chap in the states that is making them now too. V handy, as they are prone to splitting with age. The level sender delete was a bit of a headache, but i solved it thus. I spun up a couple of pieces to imitate the shape of the level sender:- And then got them anodised black. I use dorset aluminium for my anodising, no minimum order and quick turn around. Epoxy resin was mixed up and used to seal the cable, I used epoxy resin as it is fuel resistant and doesnt mind a bit of vibration. Here being left to settle to rid the bubbles:- And left over night to cure with the cap in. Here finished. you can just see the top, level with the base plate. Silly to go to such lengths on a part that you cant even see, but it was truly minging and this bike is a keeper so its nice to do thing right. Talking of minging, throttle bodies.....
Throttle bodies. Rarely do they get any love, rarely are they even cleaned. Perhaps one or twice in their life the bleed screws could be mangled trying to remove them with an ill fitting screw driver so they can be balanced, somewhere near. These were far from balanced, it was one of the problems in the very beginning, the bike would only run on one cylinder until you touched the throttle, then would only splutter as it was much colder than the other one. Yuk:- I started by stripping them down, to the last nut and bolt. All of the zinc plated steel parts were cleaned up, and taken to be re plated. I have had some hit and miss results with plating steel parts, and as a rule the cleaner they are to start with, the better the end result. I used a fine brass brush or steel wool soaked in WD40 to remove the worst of the corrosion and dirt build up, then used covers to mask off the internal areas and tumbled them in ball bearings to get this finish. I'm sorry i don't have any images of this process, its quite involving and massively time consuming. I do like results tho. Once the injectors came back from service, and the butterflies were polished I started to reassemble each body:- Not to mention the replacement bracket i made for the near side. I felt the standard steel bracket was too heavy and boring. So, in the end I have these little beauties:- Much, much nicer.
Starter motor had similar treatment, tho far simpler to accomplish. The nearest I have of a 'before' pic is this:- The paint was stripped off of the main body with a wire brush, and from the aluminium end caps with a bead blaster. Both were powder coated black. The inboard bearing was smooth as silk, probably as it is bathed in the engine oil. However the outboard bearing was notchy as hell, so I sourced bargain bearing from ebay, it was something good like a SKF or Fag, and it was like £1 posted I am sure. The two long m5 bolts that hold the thing together too were re zinc plated, and the finished article:- Another little jab was to tidy up the water hoses on the hot side of the flow. The hoses on the bike were a mixture of tired standard hoses, and green hosepipe. I ordered a set of silicon hoses from Airmax, far cheaper then samco, and no better or worse quality. hoses are a consumable after all. This aluminium pipe replaced some of the guff:- And fitted:- While I was still learning what could be done with the titanium plate, I had a go at a clutch slave guard. Ideally I would have made it a bit thicker, but its fine as it is. Before bead blasting:- After:-
Final instalment for this evening, photobucket is making me angry, so a little bit about the engine. The engine gave me two trackdays in 2009, the first at Oulton which was fantastic fun but also a steep learning curve. I had only been riding for a few months, and had alot to learn. The bike was fine most of the day, but started to run out of electricity in the afternoon. It was later traced to the reg/rec, and thereafter gave no more issues. I do however have a spare one in the tool kit now, just incase. Topping up the power with the trusty optimate saw the rest of the day trouble free, apart from the clutch starting to slip in fourth and fifth on the longer straights. The second day was late summer at Snetterton, which I think is where I met Antonye. Again, clutch was slipping on the back straight but I still had alot of fun. It was during the autumn of '09 that I decided that the motor needed checking over, and I started to take the bike to bits. I took the heads, barrels, and pistons off, but didn't want to dig any deeper. Since then I have learned a lot, and would probably have stripped it down completely. I entrusted the strip to my local ducati specialist, who is Motovation in Cheltenham. He stripped the engine and noted that the pistons and barrels were past it, and planted the seed that I could go with an 853 conversion. He also noted that I had high compression pistons and Pankl rods so was in possession of an 'SP' engine. The dates on the castings were all '96, apart from the crank cases that are '98 so the engine had been rebuilt probably during the warranty period. I later collected all of the parts from him, to get them cleaned up and also as I was finding it hard to get hold of the parts needed, pistons barrels, money.... All of the engine covers were cleaned up and powder coated, this is also a very time consuming process, washing everything, bead blasting, masking etc.. but the finished items look fantastic. The engine cases received similar treatment. Gonna have to split this up, too many images for one post...
I remember dropping the engine cases over the road at the powder coter, picking them up later that day and thinking they were brilliant! I was so happy, they looked stunning:- I started to peel the masking tape off and my heart sank. Each piece I peeled back revealed a new chip, and all of the edges were rough as sharks teeth. It looked like the paint was on too thick, and wasn't taking to the aluminium or too brittle to get a clean edge. I was so upset, I didn't take pics as I couldn't bring myself to document it. This was a friday evening, so I had the weekend to pull myself together. Back in 2010, you could buy Nitromors that was actually a paint stripper, no chance of that any more. I had a tin at the ready and set about stripping the paint off. Very messy job, it took three or four attempts to get all of the scum off, and there would be no chance nowadays, the modern equivalent won't touch powdercoat. Once the cases were ready i simply painted them meself with engine enamel, not as hardy a finish but a pretty good finish. I later dropped the cylinder heads with Chris at CJS to do the work for the 853 conversion, but not had them back yet.
