The old saying goes ‘ themore everything changes,

the more it stays the same.’ Iwon’t bother with the morecommon French version,mercifully shortened to ‘plusca change…’ or a neat twistmuch loved by dictators andphilosophers ‘everything mustchange so we can stay thesame’. This blather is only toexplain that the invitation towrite this pinged up on mylaptop while I was solderingup the bottom of the awfulpiece of plastic andcompressed cardboardmasquerading as the fuse boxof my ’75 Ducati 900ss. It doesn’t feel so longago that I was doing much the same to my firstDucati, a 204cc Elite. I was fifteen, and the yearwas 1969.

Actually a lot has changed. I don’t have to go toschool on the bike tomorrow (yes, I know, theminimum legal age was 16 back then, what did Icare?). I’m working in a brightly lit, warm garagewith compressed air, three phase and a roll-cabfull of Snap-Ons, not by a wet curbside, under asodium streetlight with a plumber’s paraffin blowlamp, but you get the idea.

That 204 Elite, or was it an SS? (I’ve still got theoriginal handbook, published by none other thanVic Camp, the UK Ducati Importer at the time,that claims it was an SS, I’ve never been able tofind the difference, if any) was rescued from afront garden in South London, it was seized andrusty but already sported a straight throughmegaphone instead of the fancy dual silencer itmust have come with. I borrowed the 30 quidrequired to buy it from eighteen different peopleand set about mending it, badly. Actually,eventually, after an almost intimate relationshipwith Vic Camp’s wife (Rose?), who ran thespares department and explained patientlywhich bit went where and usually managed torummage out a secondhand bit when I couldn’tafford a new part (always!), the thing actuallyran quite well for brief but heroic periods. I fitteda set of John Tickle clip-ons halfway down thestanchions and bright red glass fibre tank from

a Cotton racer, so I reckon Iearned my first speedingticket, 86 mph in a 30 limit,exaggerated no doubt by theMr Plods who really, reallywere not impressed bychasing me along the SouthCircular at 3 am, making anoise like all the pneumaticdrills in the world firing atonce.

The last day before I sold it,whilst desperately fettling theelectrics at the kerbside(again) so it would start for thenew owner, I chanced a “hello”to a schoolgirl with nice legs

that wandered past. She ran away, buteventually returned, forever. Yes, I met my futurewife, Anne, fiddling with Ducati electrics!

If anybody still has FTD 87B, get in touch andI’ll apologise for the terrible things I did to thatlovely little bike.

My next bike was the embodiment of all evil, itwas black, oily and British, a BSA A65Thunderbolt. I decided to match the look with asecondhand Lewis black leather jacket,complete with generous blood stainfrom the previous owner (deceased), a Page 25

WHatEVEr HaPPEnEd to ZED ZAWADA?

pair of sheepskin lined, zip-backed boots fromthe same source, and the bike’s padlock andchain around my neck. All that this managed toachieve was to horrify my future parents in law,making the path of true love very rocky indeed!

The BSA also highlighted the little Ducati’spositive points. The BSA wasn’t much faster,handled so badly it should have been put inprotective custody and broke down just asregularly. It also was made of great lumps ofiron beaten together by blokes in leather apronscalled Ron, rather than of exquisite alloycastings machined by Leonardo Da Vincihimself … so I started thinking about anotherDuke.

I wasn’t alone in this thinking, the British bikepress was praising Ducati singles in general,which in the new wide case versions wereexploding less frequently, and getting irrationallyenthusiastic about the yellow Desmo versionsthat really looked, and did, the business. Theywent completely bananas when the V twinsappeared, as did I. Alas, I couldn’t afford one ofthose, or a desmo single, or even close, sosnagged the next best thing, a tidy 350 Mk 3 inblue and gold, huge bargain because, ofcourse, it wouldn’t start, stuck points, but whyshould I tell the guy he could fix it with a drop of3 in 1 and a needle file? I still feel guilty.When fitted with the obligatory openmegaphone and bellmouth, the 350 at leastsounded fast and could probably achieve the 86mph the poor Elite was accused of.

I bought the 350 after finishing college andgetting a ridiculously well paid job as a securityguard in a new building. The job consisted ofbeing locked in from 6pm to 6am, drinking a fewcans of lager, chatting to the girlfriend on theprovided phone, and getting a splendid night’ssleep. Knowing that this couldn’t last, (it didn’t,

some likely lads reversed a Bedford truckthrough a giant ground floor plate glasswindow, making a spectacular mess, but

failing to wake me, oops!), I started applying for‘proper’ jobs, one of which was selling classifiedadvertising on MCN. When I turned up at theirLondon offices for interview two weird thingshappened. Firstly the job was not for MCN butfor Bike magazine, my motorcycle magazine ofchoice, read assiduously from the first issue toemerge from Mark William’s off centre psyche.The second was that a part of the interview wasto write, and draw, a small ad for, of all things, aheadlamp unit for a Ducati single! No kidding,Vic Camp had bought a job lot of 100 surplusElite headlamps from Aprilia or CEV and wastrying to shift them on to chopper builders andthe like. Resisting the urge to headline the ad‘Peeling Chrome and 6 volt Gloom can beYours” I wrote something sensible (ish) and gotthe job. I thus became the newly minted ‘JuniorAdvertisement Representative’ for Bikemagazine, which involved rattling around thecountryside on the 350 Mk 3, chatting to anddrinking with bike dealers, workshops, clothingemporia etc. and getting paid for it. I thought I’ddied and gone to heaven.

It got better. The editorial staffers of Bike, thenMike Nicks, Peter Watson, Bill Haylock andGraham Sanderson, were based inPeterborough, so there was a certain amount offerrying test bikes up and down to London; theyfound out I was a biker so roped me in. I didn’tcrash or steal any, so quite soon, when logisticsand time got on top of them, they asked me towrite a roadtest on one of the bikes. It was aHonda 400 four, part of a ten bike giant test,which was really ambitious back then. I can’t kidmyself that the roadtest was any good, but itwas copy, on time, to length and sort of inEnglish, so it went in the magazine.

Suddenly I was on the road test team, and testbikes started to come thick and fast, which Iloved but quickly caused an unexpectedproblem with the ‘day job’. I was floggingadvertisement space to dealers andmanufacturers on one day then slagging offtheir products in editorial on the next. Thisconflict of interest was quickly solved with a by-line change. I chose ‘R P McMurphy, centralcharacter in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,memorably played by Jack Nicholson, notbecause he ended up lobotomized, not funnynow, or even then, but for the scene when hetook the guys out for a bus trip, possibly thefunniest cinema scene ever.

Thus disguised, I could write anything I likedabout the bikes whilst continuing to schmoozePage 26

the advertisers, and, as a tribute to the anarchicatmosphere at Bike then, and to my ownnaiveté, it never occurred to anyone to writenice things in editorial to get the ads – howtimes have changed!

This was around the time that I first discoveredthe DOC GB, meeting at the Mawson Arms, aFullers pub in Chiswick, West London. I can’texactly remember what or who caused me torattle up there on the 350 one Wednesdayevening, but that almost chance encounter hada profound future effect on both my wallet andmy sanity, not always in a good way, linking meinextricably with Ducati, and particularly with thenutters that ride them!

Talking of nutters I had thought of titling thisstory ‘It’s all Ainslie’s Fault’ not because it isnecessarily so, but the mantra has so oftenbeen repeated it is part of the fabric of theuniverse. I refer of course to Anthony, skilledracer and tuner of singles, selfless and eruditeto a fault, (very) occasionally irritating beyondmeasure, for it was he that came up with the‘Imola Trip’ of 1977 – a great Ducati odysseyacross Europe, to pay homage to Smart andSpaggiari at the Holy of Holies, the Dino Ferraritrack at Imola, taking in Borgo Panigale on theway back.

Planned by Anthony over pints of foaming ESBin the warmth and comfort of the Mawson Arms,it very nearly killed all of its participants,certainly wrecked their bikes, and made theDucati factory wary of ever inviting British bikersagain. Naturally, he declined to attend the actualtrip, might have spilt his pint….

The trip has been described in the past, so Iwon’t go over it again, but what it did for mewas forge some lifelong friendships, even withAinslie, introduce me to the joys of continentalbiking, and indirectly bring me to the presentday in a garage in Poland, soldering up thecrappy rivets in an Aprilia fuse box.

To be continued ...

Anne sitting on the Ducati, September 1979. Page 27

Zed’s 900ss restoration.

900ss Aprilia fusebox.

Imola Trip

Page 14

Ishould have known what to expect, but loveis blind, so I was more than taken abackwhen my bride of literally 30 seconds – wehad just signed the marriage register in thevestry of a gloomy Victorian church – said,“It’s half mine now’.

The ‘it’ was not all my worldly goods, my bodyor my future, those were a given, butsomething much more important, my Ducati.Sorry, our Ducati ....

Yes, somewhat unexpectedly I had just signedaway half of the most beautiful, fastest,noisiest and expensive motorcycle I had everowned, and at the time, the world had everseen, an original 1975 900 Super Sport. Love,honour and obey is all very well, but really,the Desmo?

Built by the Factory in a limited edition of 249machines in response to a demand, mainlyfrom Australia, for a homologated productionracer based on the new ‘square case’ engineand to follow in the footsteps of the immortal1974 ‘roundcase’ 750 ss of Imola fame, thatrun of early 900 super sports has gainedalmost mythical status over the years, to theextent that there are many more bikesclaiming to be one in existence today thanwere ever built. This is quite an achievementsince many of the ‘real’ ones were raced todeath and the breakers yard in Australia andelsewhere was their original, and honourabledestiny. This is all despite the fact that theywere knocked together out of a mix ofobsolete parts-bin junk, execrable hand-laidglass fibre and ‘prototype’ engine bits, theposh Ducati factory term for ‘unfinished’, orindeed ‘scrap’. Cynicism and objectivity aside,back in the late seventies, they were the mostbeautiful, exotic thing (on two wheels...) ayoung man could swing his leg over. At least Ithought so.

A few had leaked out onto the British market,selling new at a breathtaking two thousandpounds, about how much I earned a year atthe time. I had to wait a while to consummatethe lust felt for those sinuous blue and silvercurves, patiently plodding about on my

ZED’S DUCATI CHRONICLES– PART II, THE 900SS

Road testing with Bill Haylock of Bike on a 1978black and gold Desmo.

Somewhere in Spain, madam in full leathers,40 degrees, Desmo cool.

Calais, waiting for the ferry home, Desmo stilllooking good under 5,000km of road dirt.

pedestrian 860GTS, knocking out a big-endin the process (there goes the cynicismagain). Anyway, despite that experience,when a second hand ’75 900ss came up forsale at Geoff Daryn’s Kent shop in late 1977,I was down there like a shot, ostensibly to talkabout advertising in Bike magazine but reallyto drool over that Imola tank. Love really isblind.

A dodgy deal was struck and I was soonhooning up the A2, bum in the air, Conti’sbarking and a grin the size of a planet underthe Bell Star. The bike had only about fourthousand kliks on its wobbly Smith’s speedoso was fresh and tight. It wasn’t raining soboth cylinders were on full baritone song,and, with a descant of induction roar from theopen PHF 40 Dellortos, all I could add was togiggle like an idiot.

At the time, the Desmo really was somethingspecial: rare, exotic, fast, it ticked all theboxes. UK roads were over-run withubiquitous Japanese across the frame fourswith elastic chassis, stainless steel discbrakes that didn’t and perfectly competentengines that sounded like domesticappliances. The Desmo was like a silver andblue thoroughbred bullet, no namby pambyelectric start, no indicators, no mirrors, notick-over and a sound straight fromApocalypse Now. A long stiff frame,Marzocchi forks and shocks with noappreciable travel and a crazy steering anglemade it track straight and true, dual drilledBrembos could chirp the front tyre from anyspeed, and Ing. Taglioni’s mystical cams andshiny forked rockers kept the engine togetherand breathing right up to and beyond 8,000rpm.

Of course, anything more than the briefestvisits to the land of ‘over 8000rpm’ would berewarded with, at best, broken rings, andmore usually a big-end making an oily, noisy,bid for freedom. Equally, trying to hustle thatlong stiff chassis round tight bends was asteroid sapping experience, only enhanced bythe adrenalin rush of having the rear wheelcome off the ground in mid corner as theexhausts grounded. Many of theseshortcomings and their heroic banishmentwere written up superbly, at around the time Ibought the Desmo, by Cook Nielsen and PhilSchilling of Cycle magazine in The States.

Somewhere in the Alps with the Desmo in full‘Sports Touring’ mode, 1978.

1978. In France: Anthony, Charlie and Zed.

Page 15One of many, many rebuilds.

Although based on a ‘round case’ 750ss, theirDaytona winning ‘California Hotrod’ was aninspiration to all Ducati obsessives, andshowed what could be done when Taglioni’sdesign was re-built from real steel, with themight of California’s aerospace andautomotive tuning industry behind it.

Even more inspiring were a bearded chapfrom the suburbs of Manchester and hismoustachioed mate from Birmingham, noneother than Steve Wynne and Mike Hailwood.The IOM TT was a major annual jolly foranybody working in the bike press, my jobwas to organise the “Ogri TT Supporters’Pubs’’, and get any potential advertisers tosign contracts by pouring unlimited quantitiesof Castletown Ale down their, and my, throats.It was a tough job, but somebody had to doit… Steve was one of these potentialadvertiser chaps, but, unsurprisingly, in 1978he was a bit too busy for a beer. Being thegreat guy he is, instead of telling me tobugger off, he invited me into the filthy,leaking garage of the Castle Mona Hotelwhere the Holy of Holies was beingprepared – the Sports Motorcycles Ducati –to talk while he and Pat Slinn wrestled withbits of green and red NCR bodywork, andswore at there being absolutely no factorysupport. When Mike subsequently won, it wasjust the best possible outcome for the Ducatifactory and very possibly one of the mostimportant contributors to the marque’ssurvival, but they still didn’t help, and Iaccompanied Steve and Pat on a visit to thefactory that November to literally beg for partsfor the next year’s efforts.

Racing then started to creep into myexistence. Not racing the Desmo, I had to rideto work on that every day, but the joys of

endurance racing, first as an innocentspectator at the Le Mans 24 Heures,

then farther afield: The Bol d’Or at PaulRicard, Montjuich Park in Barcelona, then,fatefully, the most exotic of all “The WestRaynham 1000km”, because this is where‘Team Bike, The Endurance Racing Years’came about. Yes, this godforsaken, windsweptairfield in Norfolk was where, with theimmortal words ‘yeah, we can do that’ westarted an odyssey that would take us to mostrace tracks in the world: Suzuka, PhillipIsland, Sepang included in 12 years ofsleeping too little, drinking too much, andgoing too fast.

We never raced a Ducati, not even ourinflated egos thought we could make one last24 hours, but it had a profound effect on howthe Desmo got used. In the words of PeteWatson, then editor of Bike magazine, ”youshould call what you do Sports Touring.” Withthis a complete new category of biking was, ifnot born, at least described. I had to get tothe races, and since the Desmo was my onlyform of transport, there was nothing for it butload up the camping gear and the girlfriendand head down to Dover, fast.

It makes sense, if you have to load up a bikewith tons of junk and a passenger, thenchoose the fastest bike you can to start with,particularly if you really, really, have to getthere, and ‘there’ is Circuit Paul Ricard, notmuch less than a thousand miles south of ourLondon squat. The Desmo once made it, one-up, overnight in less than 10 hours, includinga hovercraft crossing. (The ramp was comingup as I rode on, I was in the suburbs ofCalais less than 40 minutes later, and it’sactually about 800 miles, but my bum thoughtit was 1,000.)

There were many slightly more leisurely, butfully loaded up trips in the late ‘70s and early‘80s. Purists will recoil in horror but I fitted a

Page 16

Essential after-lunch recoveryon the road to Le Mans, 1978.

Zed fixing the Desmo,in the Isle of Man, 1980.

Page 17Zed's Desmo at Ricard in 1978.

dual seat robbed from a 750 Sport, a snappypair of blagged Krauser panniers whichactually tucked in really well when I cut andshut the rack, a set of Paioli motocross shocksto keep the rear off the deck, some squishyfoam grips and voila! – the Desmo was atourer. It might not be the most comfortableor reliable machine for the task, but with mygut resting on the tank bag, Anne keepingmy back warm and the Mediterraneanapproaching at 120 mph, it certainly didthe job.

It did have its limitations however: not enoughcapacity. Not the engine you understand, butnot enough beer capacity. On our very first tripto the Bol d’ Or at Ricard, as spectators ratherthan competitors, we still prepared toendurance standards, so a huge supply ofbeer was required to keep us going for 24hours. The cheapest was evil stuff called‘Valstar’, naturally re-named by us Brits as‘Valspar’, the paint, which it smelled like. Thiscame in one litre brown glass bottles, and wecould only fit some 34 bottles into theKrausers and rucksack of my pillion. This wasmore than most of our motley collection ofcafé racers could manage, but still meantseveral trips up and down the swoopy,hairpinned, French nutter Motard infested roaddown to the nearest little town. We didn’t falloff, and (most) of the beer made it to thecampsite.

Thus supplied we settled down to watch therace and became predictably tired andemotional (it was the close racing, officer….)Then some Swedes turned up with bottles ofJim Beam, and suddenly, in a fit of romanticfervour, I found myself proposing marriage toAnne, thus leading to the scary moment, ayear later, when she laid claim to half my(sorry, our) Desmo.

That motorcycle has a lot to answer for, mostlygood; I’ll finish the story of how I made up forabusing it and abandoning it, by restoring it,next time.

There wasn’t a precise moment when my900ss stopped being the most important

thing in my life and I sometimes think it neverhas, which might be news to my kids, and apositively dangerous admission to my wife, butlet’s just say that ‘other stuff’ started to intrudeon the pure joy of charging around on thatblue and silver bullet, sometime in the mid ’80s.

From the mundane, like getting a ‘proper’ job,and a company car (sometime two ... this wasthe ‘80s!), through the life stage thing ofbuying a house complete with giantmortgage, to the more exciting madness of 24Hour Endurance racing, then to spectacularunfaithfulness in the shape of a Yamaha FJ1200 (just for commuting, you understand,she’ll never find out ...) and eventually themessy business of procreation – ‘other stuff’just started to get in the way. The Desmodidn’t do itself any favours either by regularlyand spectacularly imploding and spendingever lengthier periods in bits. Even whencomplete it’s just not a ‘touch and go’ kind ofmachine, needing at least short period ofmeditation, a massive pair of boots andconsiderable physical prowess just to start,and titanium wrists and bum to ride.

I might have had all that once, but the sirencall of a hand-stitched Connolly leatherarmchair, air conditioning and a 3.2 litre flatsix woofling away in the boot soon won thatcontest on a wet Monday morning. WhenTeam Bike’s racing efforts got serious therewere just no ‘sunny riding Sundays’ whichweren’t occupied with either racing ourendurance bikes or endlessly re-buildingthem. All weekends, As team boss HowardLees would put it, “From boxing day to theBol” (September then) were taken, either withangle-grinder or Tig welder in one hand andred hot brake pads and mountains of slicks inthe other. I’m not complaining, it was greatfun, but the Desmo, suffering from someclattery internal complaint, just got shoved ina corner and all but forgotten.

I did force myself actually to get it all in onepiece and running when we moved houseand I had to store the Desmo and loads

of similar junk (is that blasphemy ... I think so)in another lock-up and I just knew that if itwasn’t at least complete, it never would seethe light of day and the open road again, andprobably wouldn’t anyway. Luckily the newlock-up was a big one, so I also decided tokeep pretty much every broken/substitutedpart and a considerable pile of accumulatedspares, just because it was easier thanthrowing them away ... phew, what anunintended good move that was!

Talking of moves, the house move wascaused by small pink wobbly things, babies!Actually, by the time we moved, they hadbecome highly mobile pink wobbly things, myson was 2, daughter was 4 and they weremightily impressed when I fired up the Desmoin a great cloud of smoke and escapingrodents. They are in their twenties now but Istill get blamed for their deep seatedchildhood trauma, the symptoms of which arean unhealthy, sometimes life threateningaddiction to the internal combustion engine.

I didn’t even manage to ride it further than thecouple of miles to its new resting place whereI emptied a can of WD40 onto the shiny (ish)bits and chucked a tarpaulin over it beforereturning to the joys of parenthood, and whatI laughingly called a career. Turns out that Iwas the only one laughing, since soon after Igot spectacularly fired from one of the world’sbest jobs, setting up MTV (Music Television)in Europe. “Money for nothing and chicks forfree” was the motto, but I don’t think theserious Americans in charge expected me totake them at their word. Oh well!

Luckily help was at hand in the unlikely formof the grizzled and scarred countenance ofMac McDiarmid, friend for life from the ImolaTrip, erstwhile editor of Bike Magazine, staringat me across an equally scarred pub table.“I’m off to Czechoslovakia (it still was then) tocheck out what’s left of the bike industry thereand I’m thinking of swinging through Polandfor a drink, fancy coming?” It was 1993 andthe Berlin Wall had only been down a coupleof years, but that meant travel for me to theland of my father was finally possible. “When

Page 24

ZED’S DUCATI CHRONICLES– PART III, ABUSE, ABANDONMENT & RESURRECTION

do we leave?” was the only possible responsefrom a guy with a house full of kids, nappiesand Lego. I was taken slightly aback that theanswer was “Tomorrow”, but an afternoon ofblagging on the phone secured an Africa Twinfrom Honda to match Mac’s Super Tenere andoff we went, eastwards.

The trip was brilliant fun and a big eye-openerfor me, and literally the day after we got backI was offered a job setting up a publishingcompany in Warsaw. A week later I wasgetting off a creaky old Tupolev in WarszawaOkecie airport, suited and booted, looking foran office building and a beer, and, successfulin both enterprises, I eventually set up myown company and moved with the family toPoland. This is only relevant because the poorold Desmo was still under the tarpaulin insouth London, and was to remain there forthe next 16 years.

I did visit it occasionally to feel ritually guiltyand empty another can of WD40 over it, but itjust sat there, getting browner and furrier witheach passing year. Finally, motive andopportunity to disinter the Desmo presentedthemselves at the same time, bizarrelyprovided by the very same kids that led to itsabandonment all those years ago. My sonwas struggling a bit during his first year at Uniin the UK and we decided that what heneeded was a direct injection of adrenalin. Hehad been racing karts, then cars in Poland foryears, and continued to return for events, butcouldn’t do much racing in the UK and wasgetting a bit fed up, so his mum ordered meto take his 6-speed kart and KTM 125 enduroto the UK to cheer him up – mums are thesame the world over! An epic van journeyfrom Poland to theUK was planned,and the idea ofbringing the Desmoback to Poland onthe return leg andfinally doing aground uprestoration wasborn.

When I made it tothe bike over tonsof junk in the lock-up and lifted off thenow mostly rotted

tarp I was kind of encouraged, it was allthere, the garage was mercifully dry and wellventilated and nothing much seemed to haveeaten it or fallen on it. The plan was quickly todrop the engine and deliver it to Nigel Laceyin Portland for a full re-build and take therolling chassis back to Poland. Nigel had beenrecommended to me as a premier enginebuilder by Anthony Ainslie (already mentionedin dispatches) when I decided that I just didn’thave the equipment, or frankly the skills toproperly do an every moving part engine buildwhich would likely involve new rods, pistons,liners and most of the gearbox as well asvalve seats, guides, valves and every rollingbearing. Despite Nigel not being able to startthe job for many months, it taking around sixmonths and costing a very serious (butentirely fair) amount of money, it was the bestdecision I could have taken.

I’ve helped build quite a few race bikes, kartsand, more recently, rally cars but I’ve nevertried re-building a classic to original spec sothe whole thing was quite an experience, andbrings up unexpected issues, particularlyabout what you are actually trying to achieve,which always ends up as some kind ofcompromise between originality and function,without even bringing in safety, legality oraesthetics. I had a head start because I hadhad the Desmo from nearly new. It was‘original’ when I got it, although that doesn’tmean it was necessarily exactly the same asall the others in that production run, or thefactory brochures, or the manuals. I wanted toride it, not show it, so decided a ‘functional’restoration was the way to go, original butretaining the essential mods that made it ‘mybike’ and rideable back in the day.

It had been rituallythrashed all overEurope so all thepaint, the chromeand rubber bitsneeded seriousattention as did thefasteners and alloybut there was nothingfundamentallymissing or modifiedexcept the rearsubframe, broken inthe famous ‘beerincident’ at the

Page 25

’78 Bol D’Or and replaced with a bit ofReynolds 531. This also required the fitting ofa slightly later, and much better designed,rear mudguard, also from 1978 I think. I hadalso ripped out the original, useless, MagnettiMarelli ignition and replaced it with a LucasRita unit which amazingly still worked.

Because the Rita has an ugly black coverover the rotor and reluctor on the rear cylinderI did consider changing the whole thing for a‘Silent Hektik” Unit (what a great name!) butcouldn’t find any definitive info on whether itwould easily fit such an early 900 as it wasdesigned to replace the later Bosch units,and, more importantly I had personally brazeda 2p piece into the gland nut that allowed theoriginal ignition wiring out of the crankcase,which I thought was cool! I had also chuckedout the original ignition flywheel which made asmall but noticeable improvement to engineresponse.

The original Jod Duplo headlight glass hadlong gone in some slow speed, not-enough-lock pub car park scenario and been replacedwith a much better Cibie sealed beam unit andthat was about it for non-standardisms, exceptfor the wheels. I had managed to blag a set ofcast Campbray alloy wheels when they werefirst introduced and had them anodized blue,which looked good and proved to be seriouslystrong, but luckily kept the original spoked,Boranni Record 4777 rimmed wheels in a box,covered with the now familiar can of WD40.These now change hands (if you can findthem) for ridiculous amounts of money, andhere I had a perfect, hardly used set!

There were a few war wounds: a bent clip-on,ditto brake lever and, of course, the entirecontents of the original Contis poured out asa fine red dust as soon as I unbolted them.Again, in a great bit of serendipity (what?) Ihad bought a pair of small bracket Contisfrom the factory when I visited way back in’79 with Steve Wynn, and I had emptied a canof WD40 inside these, and a handful ofVaseline on the outside before chucking theminto the same box as the wheels. This allsounds as if I had an ‘Ikea Flat-pack 900ssRestoration Kit’ to hand, and compared withsome heroic restos, I did, but the list of stuffthat did need replacing and sourcing started

getting long and hours of internetsearching ensued.

I decided not to be a hero and tried to out-source as much as I could. I’m never going tobe as good an engine builder as Nigel Lacey,I’m never going to accumulate 20 years ofspraying experience like Pawel Foremniakwho did the paint, I don’t have a ten foot highbank of tiny drawers with every Dell Orto partever manufactured towering over my flowbench and ultrasonic cleaning bath like MikeDavies of JRS who rebuilt my carbs. Anywaythere were enough rusty rotted bits to keepme going for ages, and I wanted to ride thebike again in my lifetime!

The biggest surprise was discovering just howmany Ducati nuts are out there, and howmany bits you can get your hands on if youpersevere. The weirdest thing about findingparts was the fact that there are essentiallythree sources, one in California, one inAustralia and one in Italy, with an honorablemention to Shipley in Yorkshire! With medoing the resto in Poland, it meant that DHL,FedEx and the rest were the ones making theprofits, and I spent as much time at thekeyboard as in the garage. California first,Bevel Heaven is both a forum for Ducatistiand a very comprehensive on-line shop forbevel bits, singles and twins. It’s an inspiredcombination because every possiblerestoration issue, problem and solution canbe found in the hundreds of pages of postson the forum. If you manage to find a newproblem, you’ll immediately get answers fromsome really knowledgeable, experiencedpeople, including Steve Allen, the site owner,who likes to intervene in the occasional ‘rivetcounting’ squabble about what is ‘correct’ byreminding people that some questionscouldn’t be answered by Ing. Taglioni himself,and then directing them to a practical, elegant

Page 26

solution. The online shop is a model of itskind; each part properly described,photographed clearly and with much betterapplication data than Ducati themselves couldever manage. Much of his stuff is actuallymanufactured (I think) by my next twosources, but he makes many precision partslocally, and has a wide range of ‘improved’bits that look like the originals but arecorrectly dimensioned, and made of goodmaterials, something the factory nevermanaged.

Moving right along to Australia, we find ‘BevelRubber’ another well-organised online store,specialising in that bane of all restorers’ lives,all the rubber, plastic, and trim bits that fall tobits first, and just cannot be re-manufacturedin your garage, even if you have a 5 axle NCmachining centre. These boots, grommets,washers and rubbers are just essential tomake the bike look right and almost none ofthem are useable after 20 years of storage.The guy who runs it, Damien Birch, also hasan expanding range of hardware and isparticularly knowledgeable about the early900ss. More than half the production run of246 machines was exported to Aus.(according to Ian Falloon, an Australian andhigh priest of Ducati gurudom) so notsurprisingly some of the best restored, andoriginal, examples can be found there,including Falloon’s own bike which features asa reference in his book, The Ducati Bible, andin which he obligingly describes the ’75 900ssas “one of the finest of all production Ducatimotorcycles.” Doing no harm at all to thenotional value of my bike, or indeed his own!

Back now to Italy and the backstreets ofCasalgrande, an outer suburb of Bologna,where, on the wrong side of the railway tracksand unfindable with even the latest GPS, lives‘Old Racing Spare Parts’, the real motherlode for Ducati bevel bits. I’ve only visitedonce, it was a freezing February Saturdaymorning and the spectacularly moustachioedowner, Mario Sassi, clearly wanted to besomewhere else, so much of what I write isconjecture. I had arranged to pick up asizeable order of stuff whilst zooming throughfrom Warsaw to Rome, (in an Audi ... it wasFebruary ...) and had got a bit frustrated withtrying to order bits from ORSP. They have acomprehensive website with a literallymouthwatering selection of ‘unobtainable ‘

parts, stuff of legend like two into one ‘Imola”exhaust systems, original ‘Roberto Ballanti ‘fairing screens, even small bracket Contis…BUT, no prices, poor photographs, partnumbers that have no relationship to theoriginals and no way of actually buying stuffwithout endless to-ing and fro-ing of emaillists to get pricing and availability. I’m surethat if you spoke fluent Italian and chatted onthe phone, many issues would be cleared up,and I suppose it’s time I learnt.

Back to Casalgrande, what a place thewarehouse is for the Ducati obsessive:complete, new 900/750 ss frames in rawsteel, sandcast 750 roundcase crankcasehalves, piles of uncatalogued, unpriced stuffthat people have been searching years for.The story is that Mario Sassi managed to buyquite a lot of the old production machineryfrom Borgo Panigale at scrap prices and,more importantly, rounded up the retired oldgents that used to operate it, and they bangout short runs of stuff like rear light brackets,headlamp shells, swinging arms and the like.How authentic is that! The same applies tothe Conti family, who knock out a fewsilencers with the old presses when they feellike it (unfortunately not often).

For me a big prize at ORSP was a complete,new, wiring loom which fitted and worked, ahuge hurdle in most restos and particularlyDucatis since the original loom is completerubbish, and had been repaired and bodgedmany times. There was, of course, a typicalItalian issue of the new wiring loom appearingto match the colours in the wiring diagram,but not of the original loom. Other small butpleasing bits were a shiny new rear light lensand its long thin screws, the originals havingfallen out on some distant autoroute a fewdecades earlier. The honourable mentiongoes to Mdina Italia, Yorkshire based andessentially marketing ORSP bits in the UK butquickly, clearly and without any discernibleprice hike.

Despite the efforts of everybody there were afew bits that I couldn’t find anywhere. The ’75ss has a very particular, straight, kickstartlever with a clever, but totally useless steppedbolt that both clamps the lever to the splinedshaft and acts as the pivot. The lever wasbent, but nothing a sledge hammer and atrip to the platers couldn’t solve. The pivot

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bolt is another story, failing in both of its dutiesvery early on in its career and being replacedwith a straight through bolt and nyloc nut thathad to be really carefully tensioned to bothgrip the spline and allow the lever to pivot andlooked really ugly. Luckily I kept the originalbolt and a consultation with my local machineshop produced a perfect, centreless groundbolt with a rolled thread that fitted the new,sleeved and line-reamed hole in the lever likeit always should have done. The price? Abottle of (good) vodka.

Poland proved to be a good place to do quitea lot of work, despite being almost a DucatiFree Zone until recent years, and never havingmuch of a motorcycle culture. What it doeshave is the remains of a substantial aircraft/precision engineering industry and a healthyapproach to ‘free enterprise’ best illustrated bymy nuts and bolts saga. All the original Ducatifasteners and lots of bits like axles andspacers were cadmium plated. Cad plating isa filthy process and has, over the years, beenoutlawed everywhere in Europe and much ofthe rest of the world. Standard nuts and boltsnow come zinc plated and the onlyapplications that will get you a special licenseto run a cadmium bath are aerospace, militaryand nuclear, only because cadmium is aninherently better coating for anti-galling andcorrosion resistance in extreme conditions. Iwas surprised to discover that this evenapplied to the grimy, post-Soviet underbelly ofPolish industry, in its newly acquired ‘we’re inthe green, clean EU status’ until the obligingchap in a brown work coat and horn-rimmedglasses that machined up my kickstart boltsaid, ‘ah yes, you want AtomPol’. Poland issomewhat famous for never having any Sovietnuclear reactors built on its soil and now toutsits ‘nuclear free’ eco credentials loudly, despitethe real reason being that the Soviets werescared the Poles would start stealing/manufacturing nuclear materials for us againstthem, rather than any eco sensibilities.Naturally, not all is as it seems, and there is, infact a working nuclear reactor in Poland,somewhat alarmingly just down the road fromwhere I live. “AtomPol is just for makingmedical isotopes and research” is the officialline, the 6 metre fences, Kevlar clad, H&K MP5 toting guards and battery of ground to airmissiles might just tell another story, but

whatever it might or might not be, it has acadmium plating plant in its grounds!

Actually the plant is in a small industrial estatethat the reactor has spawned, and all sorts ofhigh tech services are available, metallicvapour deposition, spark erosion, laser cutceramics anyone? I wasn’t allowed in, butdumped my box of 100 odd little bits at theguard house and turned up a few days later tofind them all shiny and new looking for theprincely sum of 200 zloty (about forty quid).They lost the spring washer from under thesteering damper knob, but I decided againstmaking too much of a fuss...

Soon I had a whole trestle table of either newor re-furbished bits and was just missing theengine and frame. Another epic trans-European van journey ensued, and when Ipicked up the engine I was just gob-smacked,every casting had been vapour blasted andevery casing polished, it looked like a greatbig piece of jewelry. The list of parts replacedwas pages long with every action and partmeticulously logged. Nigel used to be anuclear submarine engineer and his ‘zerodefect’ approach really showed. I had no wayof knowing if the inside was as good as theoutside, but it was good start. The paint wasdone by a mate in Poznan (Fomen Design,see below) who supplies Arai helmets andHANS devices to our rally team but whosereal passion is airbrushing helmets for therising stars of Polish and German motorsport.He has super steady pinstriping hand and alsoruns a race/tuning workshop so was able torepair and prepare the crazed fiberglass andscarred metalwork of the Desmo to anextremely high standard before laying flawlesspaint on it for its very first time. I told him notto overdo it as I wanted to avoid the ‘boiledsweet effect’ so he used hardly any filler orclearcoat and came through with a paint jobthat could have come from the factory on itsbest ever day, exactly what I wanted.

Now I had to do some proper work, strip andclean the forks, replace the seals and paintthem, put in new swing arm bushes and startassembling the whole plot. Painting Marzocchiforks is a trial known to many Ducatisti, theoriginal, bobbly, half shiny, half matt finish isso appalling that no professional paint sprayerI know will take it on and yet it just looks sowrong when done ‘properly’. There are pagesand pages devoted to obtaining authentic“Marzocchi black” on various forums, I followeda Dutchman on ‘Bevel Heaven’ who said ‘first

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of all forget all you know about good spraypainting, set your gun so wrong that it spattersand spits’. I had to strip off the first attempt, toosmooth, but eventually got it right using thickgloopy two-pack paint barely dribbling out ofthe gun.

A big moment came when I finally re-united theengine and frame, I elected to keep the framecompletely bare and drop it on to the engine:sounds simple but it took a fair amount of time,scratched enamel and very bad language. Butit’s a real buzz when the pile of bits startslooking like a bike again. A very satisfyingperiod of bolting on shiny new or re-furbed bits,dropping in lovely new bearings, brake sealsand the like followed, interrupted by thefrustration of trying to make body parts line upwhen they never did originally, and hours ofcontemplating and testing the electrics – noteasy even when armed with a new loom.

Suddenly, the list of things to fix, make or buystarted to get shorter, and I had to think abouta battery, tyres, chain, even oil! I had a bit of ascare when I read that modern fuels will eatfibre glass tanks and got an epoxy lining kitfrom Tankcare products in double quick timeand then a pair of Avons AM 26s arrived, theseat came back from the upholsterers and Ihad no excuses left. Then another panic whenthe meticulously re-built (by me) ‘shaved’Brembo PO8 calipers started to weep, the ‘o’rings between the caliper halves in the Brembore-build kits were the wrong size, nothing asobvious as O/D or I/D, just 0.2 mm to thin ...grrr! More meticulous re-building, finally a ‘hard’lever, and it was time to heave the bike off thebench and see if it felt like living.

I left the fairing and side panels off, expectinglots of remedial work before it was ready toride, even if it did start, and giving quick accessif the loom started to short. A good few kickswith the plugs out to get the Mobil 1 about theplace, plugs in with a new smear of coppa-slip,half a jerrycan of 100 octane and no furtherdithering, now was the time.Fuel taps on, hold the tickler on the rear carbuntil fuel drips on the floor, ditto front carb,ease over compression with the kick start,ignition on, three twists on the throttle for agood squirt of fuel from the accelerator pumps,then nothing left but to jump on the kickstart.Kaboom! Crobba, crobba, crobba ... it startedfirst time, and ran, crisply and cleanly.

Nobody was more surprised than me, althoughthe very shaky video on this YouTube linkhttp://youtu.be/FohIb1v6C_k shows the effecton my son, who was expecting to video an epicfail by his dad, but instead recorded the verymoment the Desmo was resurrected.

This video linkwww.youtube.com/watch?v=nIOGDbJVYrUshows me wobbling off on my first ride on theDesmo. I can’t tell you how much fun it wasblatting through the Polish countryside, scatteringanimals, children and serious church-goers on atruly sunny Sunday.

I’ve done a bit over 500km on it so far, it’srunning really well, better than I ever remember.There’s a bit of smoke on startup from the rearcylinder which seems to be reducing and an oilweep from the base of the rear cam drive tower,otherwise absolutely nothing has broken or fallenoff, including me!

It still needs to be physically threatened to goround tight bends and the suspension rattles mymuch older teeth much as before, but despitethis I’ve entered the 2013 MotoGiro D’Italia In afit of misplaced enthusiasm!

See you there.

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