After some to-ing and fro-ing I've parted company with a chunk of change and am now eagerly awaiting the delivery of a 1980 Darmah. I've bought the bike from a dealer in Newark who bought it at action in December 2022. Prior to that it was owned by someone in the Swindon area who spent quite a lot of money on the bike in 2018 with invoices for over a grand on seals and and gaskets for an engine rebuild. It was obviously painted at the same time and is in generally really good order to my untrained eye. The only other 'history' with the bike is another invoice from 1998 for a carb repair kit which, again, was purchased by someone in the Swindon area, so the bike obviously spent a fair bit of its life there. A HPI check confirms that it's a UK bike, originally registered in Bristol and it was last taxed and on the road in 1993, but apart from that I know nothing about its history so I'm posting this on the off-chance that someone recognises the registration and may be able to fill in some gaps. Anybody?........
Is that the Red one that was advertised for £8000? I’ve been watching that one for a few months wondering why nobody had bought it!
Me too, so I made the trip to have a look at it. It was missing the centre stand but I’ve bought one from Mdina and it’s painted and ready to fit. None of the dash lights were working but the dealer has replaced them all as well as the tacho cable which had gone. It wanted new tyres as the old were a bit vintage, so I paid extra for those but apart from that it looks and sounds great.
I haven’t taken delivery yet, but there are the pics from when it was auctioned and I have a short video of it running. Haven’t a clue how to post them though…. Here's the URL of the auction record: https://www.handh.co.uk/auction/lot/309-1980-ducati-darmah/?lot=56782&sd=1# And the current Ad: https://misukltd.com/vehicle/ducati...hamshire-2dd9432b-b2ed-4c0d-8cd2-2a76b4efb6d3 Speaks volumes about classic bike values....
Nice - I see it has replacement indicators with the front ones mounted off the headlight rather than a bracket attached to the bottom yoke. And it's the first one I've seen with a speedo in mph only - although I'm wondering if the mileage is in fact kms Good news on the centre stand mind because the side stand is notoriously dodgy in use, allowing the bike to roll forward, with it's weird placing right at the front of the frame down rails. Enjoy
I must admit I hadn’t noticed the indicators. Whether the speedo is off an earlier bike or has had a new face fitted remains to be seen. I wonder why the mudguard bracket was painted black myself….
I hadn't noticed that and possibly it was done for the same reasons the handlebars & the bottom of the side panels were painted black...
Well, the bike arrived in late January and I've had a holiday since so I haven't had a lot of time to devote to the Darmah yet. She started well enough and came up to temperature without the slightest whiff of smoke and has even compression of 150lbs in both cylinders, so that bodes well, but I wasn't happy with the tick-over at all. So, a little investigation revealed that the throttle was broken and sticking and the top cable was badly kinked and starting to fray. I managed to get a NOS twist-grip off fleabay and ordered a new top cable from Mdina Italia. However, when I fitted it and started to set the carbs up, I discovered that the bottom cables were too short for the slides to bottom out. The bike was obviously originally fitted with 32's and the cables are too short for the 40mm carbs on the bike. Either that or whoever put it back together bought second hand cables and got the wrong ones. Given the state of them though, I doubt that's the case and suspect they are the original articles which came with the bike. I've spoken to Doug at Mdina (what a helpful fella he is) and he's trying to source some of the correct length for me. I've ordered some gasket kits for the carbs as well because they are pretty grim once you take the lids off and will need a good bath. I've been doing some digging about the bike and have found some posts on here and another Ducati forum by a fella called Britcyclerider from back in 2017. He had just bough a 1980, red and white Darmah in pieces and was about to restore it. I'm 99% sure it's my bike as he was looking for a replacement RH side panel as the one with the bike was US and mine has a brand-new RH side panel. He describes the bike as having been off the road for over 20 years which ties in with the tax history and as having had 2 previous owners. It looks like he gave up at some point in 2017 though as he stopped posting and 12 months later someone spent a lot of money putting this bike back together as I have the invoices for some of the parts with over £1,000 spent on new gaskets, oil seals, valves and a few other bits and bobs. It was also repainted to a high standard and lots of other new parts have been fitted. I know this wasn't done by Britcyclerides as he lives in Dorset and the invoices are for an address in Swindon and a fella who owns a scrap metal business and (possibly) now also a bike dealership. The clocks look like they are off an earlier machine as they're in MPH only, but everything else looks pukka to me. One possible cause for concern is a very slight oil weep from the centre gasket, but I'm not too worried about it as it really is minor. Unless someone on here tells me I should be losing sleep............
Ducati Paddy & Eurocarb are both good places for Dellorto spares with the latter pretty much doing it all. I can't believe there's enough difference in the 32 & 40 mm carbs (slide heights) to make the bottom cables too short. It could be the top cable routing is incorrect or, more likely I suspect, wider bars have been fitted. A good upgrade is to fit a twin cable throttle. In addition to possibly helping with the routing it also greatly helps in syncing the carbs. Just check it really is coming from the centre gasket as leaks from other spots can run down & under the engine to rest on the casting centre lips. And also check to see if it gets worse after a good 10 mile run.
I was just looking at the photographs of the bike and I notice the top single throttle cable from the bars goes out and around the front of the right hand fork. Perhaps a little extra length can be gained by routing it closer to the fork leg rather than out & around all the cables and gubbins. In fact in my set up, and I'm not sure whether this was the factory routing or not, the cables don't go around the fork leg but are routed directly from the bar end underneath the fork leg and between the tank & headstock.
I have altered the routing of the top cable to make the turn less acute. It now runs, as I believe it should, below the headlamp. However, the top cable is now fine and the length of it was never a problem anyway. Nor is the length of the outers for the bottom cables. The issue is the free length of the bottom cable inners which is too short to allow the slides to bottom-out, even with the carb-top adjusters fully in. If you think about it logically, the 40mm cables need to be 8mm longer than the 32mm cables to do the same job and, as the adjusters have a maximum of around 10-12mm movement, to use cables of the same length would be asking for trouble when one of them is 650mm long. Believe me, they are the wrong cables for 40mm carbs.
Yes... my bad & you are correct... it's the free length of the inner cable that's crucial and not necessarily the total cable length. Perhaps that's why I've always had a twin cable throttle with my 40 mm.
Speedos were MPH only for a lot of bikes in the 80's, here's an example of a similarly equipped SSD https://www.classicbikehub.uk/features/article/ducati-900-ssd-darmah/
They were indeed, but Ducati fitted one in MPH and KMPH from 1978 onwards on the SD. My bike is a 1980 and a later one at that as it has no kick-starter so it should have a different speedo for sure.
You're no doubt correct and that's possibly what it should have fitted to it, until Louigi went to the mph/kph speedo box on the production line and it was empty, so he grabbed an mph one out of the next box. Remember you're talking about a company who can't say for definite how many bikes they built for some model years.
It's not impossible I'll grant you. However, given that the bike was described as 'in pieces' in 2017 and the then owner was doing a trial reassembly to see what was missing, I suspect these clocks came off an earlier bike. If I ever get to the fella who rebuilt it, I'll know for sure.
