ducati trackbike project

dug the sprocket carrier out of the parts bin with all intentions of just gunking it down and wafting with a rattle can, it's a piece you won't even see, after i cleaned off the grease and grit i could see that, at sometime in the bikes history, the chain had jumped the sprockets and twatted the carrier, i set to with some 400 grit wet and dry paper and cleaned up the damage, stuck it in the lathe and machined up the front surface and drilled out some 10mm holes between the strengthening webs in the casting, costs nothing and weighs even less......

ducati track bike project

took the frame, swing-arm and top yoke in for powdercoating at 1100hrs yesterday, txt message complete with photo's at 1500hrs, job done, picked up my bit's at 1600hrs, chris at 'the wheel specialist' in burton-on-trent is one of the good guys, a real enthusiast and brilliant service to boot. really chuffed that the hugger mounting holes i welded up have dissapeared, 'huggers, we don't need no steenkin' huggers.......'

ducati track bike project [aka unradical ducati, the blind stagger, the poverty bike, peaky blinder]

everybody's a fucking expert, i'm a pipe fitter - welder by trade, the last few welds i've had done by 'expert's' have been a pile of toss, so, i've dug out the old 'hobby' arc welding set out from under the bench and done it myself, filled the holes in the swingarm where the hugger fit's onto the standard bike, cleaned off all the redundant brackets on the main cradle too. had a couple of hours spare tonight so filed off the casting flash off the bottom yoke, wet and dry and a quick polish with solvol, yes, yes, i know you won't even see it, but, i can't sleep at night if i know i left it...............

ducati track bike project [aka unradical ducati, the blind stagger, the poverty bike, peaky blinder]

peaky blinder update. building bikes in a shed, keeping it real....no t-shirts, no stickers, no hats, [beanies as worn by guy martin or snap-back peaks] no wax cotton tool rolls, no aluminium coat hangers, no hipster bollocks, no kissing arse, no product placement in trendy shops, just straight up, honest, no corporate, no fuck's given exchange of views, free of charge, no agendas, no politics and no censorship.......

ducati track bike project, [aka unradical ducati, the blind stagger, the poverty bike, peaky blinder]

well, what on the surface seemed like a ten minute job resulted in an afternoon struggling to remove the cush-drive rubber bushings from the rear wheel, i hit them with a couple of sprays of penetrating fluid late last night before i went to bed, warmed them up with the paint stripping gun and tapped out the wheel bearings easily, the cush rubbers? no bloody chance, i broke out the propane torch and heated up the wheels so much that the paint blistered on the rims, selected a piece of aluminium round stock as a drift and my favourite hammer, bosh, bosh, bosh, nothing, bollocks, i daren't hit them any harder for fear of actually breaking the castings. in the end it came down to very careful drilling on the bridgeport to get them out. i have never seen a bike so neglected as this one, even the mz commuter bike we used as a basis for the mz racer project was in better fettle than this beauty. systematic abuse, neglect and bodging by the p.o's tell a sorry tale, the wheel bearings, swinging arm bearings, head bearings and spindles have never, ever seen any lubrication, i priced up replacements and i'm into nearly £200 quid with the cush-drive rubbers included! the budget is almost spunked already, that's it, i promise this is the last bike project for me, i'm going to go and buy a nice, reliable, clean, late model honda next time, fuck the old bikes...........

ducati track bike project, [aka unradical ducati, the blind stagger, the poverty bike, peaky blinder]

bought some bright steel roundstock from stafford, to make some seat posts, i'm only five-ten but i'm long in the leg, so to get the correct bum-to-foot ratio i needed to make some mountings, cut and end milled to shape and broke out the ancient hobby arc welding kit from deep within the depths of the bench, warmed up the damp 2.5 rods on the radiator overnight and tacked them into position, cut them off at 40mm so i can use some ally round stock to fine tune the height i need. chalky is an ex joiner and he knocked up this great engine stand, its got proper tongue and grooved joints and everything, brilliant, it will make fettling the engine prior to rattle-canning so much easier, nipped in to see rob at racing lines and he took off my tyres for nowt, cheers mate, better than struggling with a couple of tyre irons for half a day for sure, got to set to with the hacksaw and file and clean off the redundant brackets from the frame, make up a couple of bushings and tack them on to carry the coils and get the old bearings out of the wheels, never a dull moment in the loveless shed...........

stafford show [oh, the damage is done, i guess i'll be leaving]

trapped to the stafford show on sunday, lots of very shiny jap bikes, restored to the max, ride to work cd 200 hondas etc.  sorry, but why? they were shit back in the day, why spunk a load of money restoring one / customising when everyone was hocked up to fuck buying an rd 250 / 400, lc, gs thou, big kwak or, for poor people a honda single ohc or dohc comstar shitter? anyhoo, here are the pictures of the bikes worth seeing, the rest were toss. end of. from someone who was there. like barse said, anything at stafford is the shit they can't sell on evil-bay, ain't that the truth..........

ducati track bike project, [aka unradical ducati, the blind stagger, the poverty bike, peaky blinder]

so, i admit it, i've spunked a fortune on the mz racer and the bmw racer project, i guess i just back the underdog everytime, i should have just bought a honda instead of trying to build and race a hopelessly underpowered machine, but i suppose i'm just an old romantic who believes that dreams really do come true and you can compete on a level playing field, can you fuck, so, beemer gone and after the fun i had on my almost standard 900ss at the classic bike trackday in august i've decided to build the 750 'poverty' bike into a track bike and to have some fun on the 'cheap'. my aim is to build an 'unradical' ducati, the spanish 'radical' company folded earlier this year, the official line was that they had achieved everything they wanted to and they were moving onto pastures new, the forums, blogs and 'tinterweb were full of stories of piss-poor quality parts and broken promises. so, my vision for this bike is mild tuning, weight loss and just general 'massaging' of parts to achieve a nice, tidy bike thats fun to ride and doesn't cost a fortune. i'm sticking with the 'poverty' standard single caliper and disc, it won't develop enough power to need a twin disc/caliper set up, i'm going to use the hideous red plastic braided lines, [don't worry, they are stainless braided underneath and just need the stupid coating stanley blading off] a sprinkling of hand made carbon bits, [out of the off-cuts i can get from a 'certain well known aerospace manufacturer'] some stainless fasteners, cheapo chinese levers and carbon cans, a bit of rattle can and powdercoating, decent tyres and careful preparation, basically everything that goes into a loveless bike. case in point, the seat unit, sourced from moto-carbon in sheffield, a couple of bits of quarter tubing machined up to make the seat mountings, still to be welded onto the frame, the seat rails abbreviated by a foot, [or 300mm for our metric fans] lot's of work to do, i mean, just look at the pigeon shit welding on the original seat mounting brackets! but, take a look at the mock up of the seat / tank combo, can you really imagine anything else looking better? 'just remind me, what is it you do?' 'i do bad things.............'