I fell in love with the Round Case Ducati a few years back. The Barber Motorsports Museum has a green frame example SS (along with about everything else!) What more could you want in a bike: The Torque and rumble like a Harley with the smoothness and ability to spin up the RRRs! Comfortable enough to ride all day, yet sporting to handle the hills or track, hell, I even used mine to run errands! To me, the 1971- 1974 Ducati is one of, if not the finest, motorcycle ever made. The bike just does it all and with style, grace, and power....a true gentleman's bike!
The most desirable of this era was the 750 SuperSport, where I drew much inspiration for the "Full-Sport." 401 Green Frames were made as race bike copies hand-built by the Bologna race shop...these can be a $100K bike these days! "Beyond engineering, into art," Dave Minton wrote in March 1976 in MotorCyclist Illustrated.
This bike was bought from a friend's dad in Denton, TX. It was a GT at that time, which means it had the long 70's style seat and mid controls. Very comfortable but nowhere near as cool as the Sport or SuperSport with the cafe tail. Total production of the 60HP GT worldwide was 4093 from 1971-1974; about 1/2 of those were in the U.S., if I remember right.
When I got the Ducati out of the trailer, the elation was incredible! I had given a friend cash to pick it up on the way back from our ride in Austin that year. It looked great, was complete but had been sitting without being run for four years. It had a steel tank as the later years did, the carbs were full of gunk, and the petcock was clogged, of course. A dose of Metal Rescue Rust Remover Bath took care of the rust in the tank, and I had the carbs ultrasonically cleaned.
The bike was restored, and the motor was built with Sport specs (mainly that means different cams) in 1994. An electronic ignition was fitted already, but the owner couldn't remember why he quit riding it...well, I found out! After getting it up and a couple of test runs, everything seemed great. Then one morning, during rush hour, I decided to take the long way in to enjoy the ride. I got about 2 blocks from the shop, and it just died. After huffing and puffing before having a cup of Joe, it was pretty clear it had a flawed charging system. This is the weird part: the worst thing about early Ducati's...the electronics are less than stellar. Ducati started as an electronic's company, but then they made a fuse many people had to hold together with rubber bands to make it work properly! Luckily, modern wiring, plugs, and fuses are easy to come by, and we rewired everything from scratch and updated the charging system with a newer stator and regulator. The headlight is a modern Monster, and we pre-drilled the frame for wires to get rid of the unsightly zip ties that normally hold them.
As most of you know, building special machines means you had better know (the right) people. I met Rich Lambrechts and Vicki Smith from DesmoPro at the Cafe Racer TV premiere party at my shop in Atlanta. He pulled up on this kick-ass black and gold square case Ducati cafe that was just rasping a nasty cackle with the smell of high octane sweetness. Rich asked if he could park his bike inside the shop (even though there were 250 bikes outside, 30% of which were from out of state), but that bike was sick, so I said sure why not. Come to find out later, his 2 episodes were the lead-offs that premiered outside on the big screen. I was too busy hosting to actually get to watch that night.
The Big Kahuna AMA event was going on the next couple of days with Cafe Racer TV, and quite a few guys from around the country that had been on episodes had set up in an area. I was really impressed with Rich and his work. We hit it off pretty quick. He had previously worked on Hot Rods, and his Great-Grandfathers were the master pinstriper and a master machinist at Packard Motorcar Company...an artistic math brain, the most dangerous kind!
Rich helped me along on the bike as he is one of the foremost experts on Bevel Twins, but particularly on the building of the motor. Like many people I know, the perfect part of the Ducati motor is also what makes them more challenging to deal with than the standard engine. Everything is put together with Bevel Gears and Ball bearings...everything! Those of you that understand engineering realize that whether it's a 9" Ford Differential or a Ducati Cam Drive, Bevel cut gears have to be shimmed to line up correctly. Finding the shims is another issue; they're a leftover NOS part, it seems to me. We built this engine in 6 days; it made me crazy just helping! As with most production vehicles, there's not enough budget to warrant top-quality fasteners except inside the rotating assembly and head parts. Replacing the ho-hum Allen bolts with SS Head Bolt Grade ARP 12 points really takes these motors to a new level! We added a second disc on the front with drilled rotor's ala SuperSport. I tried to use the factory-style small holes but couldn't stand them, and I drilled them out to a more modern size for lightness. We narrowed the rear of the bike as the factory would have done on Sport Models.
FOX Shox Podium R Street Twin shocks are awesome! This is actually the first set of production models they used for the catalog shots. If you're looking for a killer pair of unusual Cafe Shocks not everyone has, these are the ones! The tail is the Sport and SuperSport factory-style unit with a twist. The light is from a car dug out from my stash of swap meets, and eBay finds. We decided to keep the stock GT tank as it looks and works great, plus it differentiates the Full-Sport from others and is still a factory part. Joe Patterson and I laid out the hockey puck graphics he sprayed. I wanted the factory racing stripes feel but wanted to do our own version. John Dunn and Chastin Brand striped the tank and tail. The Diamond Pleat Perforated leather seat was sewed by John Whitaker.
There isn't a lot of chrome on the Full-Sport, but the Conti pipes are one of them. This is probably the first and only bike I left a stock exhaust system on...it just works. There were some dings in them but otherwise in good shape. I drilled a couple holes in areas where you can't see to do some dent removal. Once finished, I welded the holes, and metal finished. Artistic Silver Plating in Signal Hill, CA, finished them off in chrome. For its inaugural ride after its new life, we took a ride to Amelia Island, Florida, for the incredible concourse and Festival of Speed. The paint was barely dry, and I didn't have the seat held down very well. It's supposed to be a 7 hour ride, but we took all the backroads, first stopping at the Dukes of Hazzard Festival in south Georgia.
The bike ran perfectly, and we made it!
