MM MECC ANICA

Daniele

<catching up the blog with the past year and a half of ownership>

My first street bike, a further exploration into the world of motorcycles and what better place to start than the dream chassis from my childhood. It still looks modern 25 years later, has more performance than the street really needs, lacks all modern electronics and still has fuel injection perfect for the range of altitudes I ride at..

This bike is a model year 2000 DUCATI 748 E, homologated to European spec, original color is red, production date 6/19/2000. What does this mean? Well, it was a base model 748 that likely didn’t have reflectors or emissions equipment required on US Bikes, and likely a sachs shock and showa fork. The bottom line equipment for that era.

The state I bought it in? Used well and heavily modified. Owner before me fully refurbished the bike cosmetically and put quite a few sweet parts, some less so (the ugly fairings) and it seemed very well taken care of.

What is the 748? It’s a smaller bore with the same stroke as the infamous 916 introduced in 1994. Even with the small bore, it is no slouch with 96hp at 11,000 RPM. From the factory, the bike weighed in at 430lbs wet.

Dry clutch and cover in all its clackity glory.

This bike was modified using factory parts from a biposto (two seater) to a monoposto (one seater). This required someone tracking down a rear aluminum subframe which isn’t easy to find and then fully powdercoated, this was a frame off rebuild at some point.

They also had the killer looking wheels of the era (instead of the ugly 3 spokes) re powder coated. The Marchesini 5 Spokes (made by Brembo) are some of the best looking wheels to me installed on a factory motorbike. I mean, is there even a question? I really prefer the gold wheels, and next tire change that may be something I switch up on the bike.

The factory airbox, gas tank, fenders and a few accessories all were swapped to carbon counterparts on this bike. I have yet to weigh it, but it should drop quite a few pounds with these changes.

This bike was fitted with an IMA Triple tree holding Ohlins FG43 forks with radial fork feet allowing 4 pot brembos and their racing master cylinder counterparts on both sides. This combo likely came off of a more modern Ducati 998/1098 as this configuration wasn’t available in that era on these bikes. These brakes have the best feeling I’ve ever experienced. The rear shock was also upgraded to an Ohlins and both have been professionally tuned by Cogent and anodized black with TiNi coatings. Woodcraft clipon bars round out the front end.

I was able to track down a 25 year old Ducati Corse 13,000 RPM Tach for the bike which came on the higher end models. With a rev limiter at 11,500 and the factory base model tach being at 11,000 it didn’t feel right. The tach will need a bit of oiling or a rebuild as it bounces quite a bit right now when revving.

STM Clutch slave goodness.

Out back is the twin 50mm Arrow carbon exhaust and some aftermarket LED tail lights, man is it throaty.

Checking belts and doing a once over on the bike. Forks needed new seals, belts will need to be replaced in a year or so, but were in spec. Front brake line had rubbed, likely due to a lay down on the bike. Oil had a couple flakes in it but I didn’t think much about it at the time…

First ride!!! Ripped out one of my favorite farm roads to learn the bike. Compared to my dirt and rally bike, this thing turns in and handles like its on rails. Braking is beyond superb, and the throaty growl consumes you. The power isn’t ridiculous, if anything, an extra 20-30hp wouldn’t be a bad to have, but in its current state its already too easy to go fast for the street. Gearing is way too tall, 1st gear hits 80ish so this will be adjusted and should help with the power band. I don’t have a lot of photos from this ride because I was pretty consumed in the experience, but I think I rode 500 miles in 2 days on this bike around the mountains by my house. This was November 11th and as you can see in the background, some snow had already landed, so I had to be pretty careful in the shade and not push it.

Time to Modify!!!!

I couldn’t stand the fairings on this bike. They are cheaper aftermarket fairings from china made to look like old racing fairings from the era, what bothered me the most was how misaligned all the stickers were prior to clear coating over them. Putting them on correctly wouldn’t have been any harder than putting them on crooked at the factory…drives me crazy….so…. I had to strip them down and paint them. I originally wanted to go red, but with modified the red wheels and frame it was too much rosso for me. I debated a million color combos, but nothing felt right…

…so I went to my favorite model of these bikes as inspiration, the 916 Senna or 748S.

…and found a few other people who had done something similar online…

But something still didn’t feel right. My dream for this bike would be full carbon panels on everything which isn’t impossible, but wasn’t in the cards right now.

So I started to make it my own, a bit of bad photoshop and I landed on the direction I wanted to take. Gold details to offset the brake rotors and calipers, with a red on the logos to match the frame and wheels…

Paint mix for this Senna color bike could only be found via one shop in the UK, and the matte is incredibly hard to paint even if I could get it mocked up here, so I decided I wanted the tones of the grey, but will go with a more traditional base color and clear.

There was a lot of staring at vinyl colors in all the light…

…and trying to find a color off the shelf that would give me the carbon grey matching look with enough yellow to be seamless. Most grays these days are on the cool side rather than the warm side like I wanted.

So I ended up at the local paint shop with a few carbon body panels to color match exactly what I wanted.

I ended up with a grey that had very warm almost gold metal flake that offset the yellow epoxy color of the carbon perfectly, and really matched the red frame and gold accents well.

I was able to find a slightly damaged but original carbon Ducati Performance front fairing for the rebuild. It had been repaired before, but was painted to hide the repairs so I started a new refresh…

Taking it all down to pure carbon where the issues were

Using Carbon Kevlar weave (this image is a mockup) on the inside to create a backing for the exterior carbon fiber I was able to take smaller patches to try and blend the weave direction on the front. It ain’t perfect, but more than sufficient structurally and cosmetically for me.

I also started on bringing carbonfiber into the tailpiece in lieu of the expensive fully carbon rear tail. This will turn out to be a bad idea mainly because of the epoxy’s inability to handle any sort of heat, but its all part of the process.

The rear got stripped, coarse scuffed and layed up with carbon fiber

It took a few attempts and some modifications to get it closer to what I wanted, but I was always chasing high/low spots and blemishes or show through, eventually with 2 layers of carbon I was able to get a result I could accept.

With the carbon modifications were curing, I got started on all the panels and endless sticker removal and sanding. I’m still finding pieces of sticker hand peeled with a razor blade around the garage a year later.

Adhesion promoter sprayed

And a basecoat

First coat of color

Didn’t do the greatest job at color sanding. Due to the metallic in the paint, I should’ve spent a few extra hours blending the panels becuase streaks showed up once clear was applied. Live and learn…

First Mockup after paint

Vinyl came in!

Did a trace of the stickers onto rice paper to mockup sticker locations on the bike without ruining the stickers.

Fairing stickers applied! This is where it’s coming together.

Rear pinstriping applied

Windscreen hadn’t been delivered yet, but it was photo time!

Color of the panels against the carbon, you can see some of the color sanding issues here.

Bike back together, time for my first “roadtrip” on the most uncomfortable motorcycle! But…first 4 miles of dirt on a supersport bike to get to the freeway.

Fortunately there is a small tank on this bike, I have to stop and stretch far more frequently than it runs out of gas.

A few hours in…that didn’t take long…got away with a “15 over the speedlimit warning”. Probably didn’t hurt that I had the bike pulled over and helmet off by the time they even reached me.

Well 10.5 hours and 535 miles later I made it to Ft. Tuthill in Flagstaff for Overland Expo. It was painful, my left foot couldn’t shift for the last 3 hours of the ride. I will soon discover that I pinched a nerve and will have dropfoot for the next 3 months and lots of PT.

Coolest bike at OEX, a modified XT500. I want to build something similar to this on the 1973 Suzuki TS185 I have at the house.

A few days later, I turned around, left foot completely useless and just flopping around. I wouldn’t be trying the full journey all the way back home that day, but meeting a friend half way and stopped for some beauty shots.

After a long break and stretch and some nerve massaging, I got back on the bike heading north, nothing but desert and open roads…

After about an hour on the road, the bike started running funny going reasonable speeds. I looked down to the gauges (which you can’t see tucked behind the windscreen) and the bike was hot and miss-firing, I backed off and heard loud clunking but limped it to a parking lot to cool down. Wasn’t sure the cause but let it cool down while I ate some lunch and a sign appeared above…a California Condor! To the first world’s people, it is associated with death and mourning as well as rebirth and renewal. Its a little bit of both in this case…

I start the motorcycle up, it still does not sound good, I limp it on the shoulder another mile to a gas station and hotel. It’s Sunday afternoon on a Res, and AAA gets called. I’m 5 hours from the closest tow company, but fortunate this happened close enough to a place with services. So for the next 5 hours I bake like a lizard in my black leathers on the asphalt in 90F+ degree heat.

I suppose the views could be worse.

Bike gets loaded onto a flatbed and we work our way into town where there is an autoshop/uhaul dealer there that just happened to be working over the weekend after hours. I rent a box truck and we bcak the flatbed against the box truck and roll the bike into and strap it down. Three more hours in the uhaul and I meet my friend at a restaurant and hotel we set up. A beer was waiting and I’m sure it took everything he had to not drink the last one for how long he was waiting.

I get back home the next day and start evaluting the damage.

Rear brake reservoir line melted but did not burst. This engine got HOT!!!

Removed the clutch so I could hear the engine noises…also not good. Almost positive it’s a spun big end rod bearing.

Spark plugs looked ok, one a bit oily.

Damage Recovery in process on the other machine.

All the sparkles in the oil.

Pretty sure now, I lost one of the rod bearings. What caused that at 17,000 miles is hard to say. The 748’s are known for this but it usually doesn’t happen this late in the breakin game. My buddy and I came up with a theory. I think I got bad gas on the reservation and the bike start knocking and getting hot. Unfortunately with all the other Ducati noises going on and being tucked behind a windscreen at speed, it’s really hard to notice something like that developing. If the bike got hot because of that and the oil thinned out, there is a chance the bearing was starved of oil, and boom. Here we are.

The bike now sits as I try and figure out what to do next.

A few months later I find a line on an engine in Scotts Valley, so my wife and I take a quick roadtrip out there, stay in Monterey for a few days and turn around.

I know I’m getting a used replacement engine from the right guy when this is his garage.

Scored a few original Ducati bike stands, slipper clutch, quick change gear set and misc other parts as well.

Now we wait for the next phase!