Tieing up some loose ends...

Finished up some smaller details on Friday.

First, I cleaned up the battery holder and drilled the mounting holes. Before I spray it with primer, I am going to add some reinforcements to the corners and ribs to the base. I am going to laminated some L channel into the base to add linear rigidity and prevent the battery base from rubbing the mounting bolt heads.

The forks seals showed up that afternoon too! I tapped them in, torqued down the damper bolt and added 110cc of ATF fluid to each leg. After a couple test strokes, they were in working order!

I wiped them down and set them aside.

That was all to report.

Mixed day...

Today I switched gears between two different projects.

The first was to find a suitable battery for the bike. The original Ducati's had a 6V system. A popular modification for these bikes was to resolder the leads from the alternator to make a 12V system. Luckily, the original builder of this bike already completed this task.

Now I was left to find a 12V battery. Since no one would list a 12V 67 Duc, I based the decision on physical dimensions. I spent some time on the Yuasa website searching their catalogue for suitable batteries. I acknowledge there are cheaper options out there, but in my experience, Yuasa batteries are worth the price. Especially considering the low output of this alternator and the demand that will be placed on it.

After comparing all the numbers, I decided to go with the cheapest, highest output, lightest and cheapest battery they offer. I am using the type for a 2001 GSX-R600. With the popularity of this bike, finding a battery will not be a challenge.

The next problem was making a holder for it. The battery platform already welded into the frame was measured earlier to see what the largest size was that would fit. Now I needed to make a cup to hold the new GSX-R battery.

For this, I turned to simple fiberglass. I already had all the materials on hand, so I dove right in. First I used scrap Styrofoam to form a plug the size of the battery. 90mm x 150mm.

Next I trimmed the fiberglass fabric to approximate size. I mixed the resin and started laying sheets.

Below is the result prior to trimming and finishing.

For finishing I will cut away the excess, sand everything to smooth, drill the two mounting holes and paint it all black. A rubber strap will be used over the top of the battery to retain it in the holes. A couple rubber strips will be placed between the platform and cup to dampen some of the vibrations.

Next I moved on to some painting. As much as I would like to use a Colorrite or Sherwin-Williams system, which I have experience with, the new budget simply does not allow it. A comparison would be $350 to $75. Also considering the small amount of actual painting on this bike, I opted for the more economical route. I am just proceeding more slowly and carefully and if at any time the Dupli-Color looks questionable to me, I am saving for the better paint.

Below is a sample color dip to see what I was dealing with. The same sticks were primed before the color coat was added. Note, clear coat was not applied, so that will add the gloss.

The red is darker than appears in this picture. It is not as deep as Ducati Red, but close enough. From here I moved onto surface sanding a priming. It will be a couple weeks before I can actually add the color, but I felt the itch to get some work done tonight.

Here are the pieces that will be painted, minus the battery holder.

Johnny Law...

The bike might be old, but the Indiana BMV laws it will be held to for registration are not. Kind of ironic...the newest pieces of the bike are the turn signals and brake light.

The brake light is a generic one I found one eBay for the cheap. The turn signals were found on eBay also, used from a Triumph Bonneville. I have matching ones for the front. Mounting them will be another posting.

Like most everything else on this bike, the mounting bracket required me to fabricate it myself. After looking at the combination with the rear fender, I decided to scrap it. The spacing with the fender required the entire brake light assembly to protrude from the frame. It just did not compliment the lines of the bike. I checked the Indiana laws and a rear fender is not required, merely a shielding device. Meaning, the canted license plate will act as the shield.

I took some rough measurements and starting cutting the scrap steel I had left over. The picture belows shows the pieces cut and holes drilled prior to welding.

After welding, as trial fitment of the components was done to ensure there were no clearance issues. As can be seen, the turn signal mounting bolts are just a little bit longer than needed. They will be trimmed before the final finish.

Below is the fitted components.

From here the bracket had to be affixed to the frame. I tried every imaginable position and finally realized the best placement was to trim 1" from the rear frame loop and weld the bracket flush. I payed particular attention to these welds as they would be considered load bearing to a mild degree. Wow, the welding has come a long way since I first picked up a torch a couple weeks ago.

Keep in mind, this assembly will be powder coated black with the rest of the frame. And of course, it will be cleaned up before the powder coating.

Finally, here is a picture of the mounted assembly.

The license plate is an old one from a previous bike. It is being used only for sizing and placement.

The forks on the bike go up and down...

...up and down...up and down...

The joys of fork work have begun! I am almost concerned, though, about how easily it has gone thus far.

This is the battle ground...the infamous garage.

This is the first fork submitting. Notice the high tech shop rag being used to prevent surface abrasions in the vice. Precision is the utmost concern! lol.

The only challenging part of the procedure was removal of the damping rod. The base hex bolt came out easy enough, but the rod housing required some tapping to come free. I threaded an extra long bolt into the damping rod base and provided some counter force with a ball peen hammer. After a few taps, the assembly came out clean.

The second fork was disassembled in a matter of minutes. The stuchon tube, lower leg and damping rod assembly were all then washed in mineral spirits and blown dry with the air compressor. Once cleaned, all parts looked almost new!

The damping rod assembly in the older ducati's had a unique design. A series of 9 steel ball bearings are captured in a perimeter assembly that slow the flow of oil between the upper and lower portions of the fork leg. Without removal of the unit, I was sure to rinse these parts thoroughly with mineral spirits and compressed air. By the end, all 9 were moving freely in their rack.

Fork seals were easily found! A technical note, ducati forks had stuchon tubes of 31.5mm diameter. Interestingly, a common size of fork seal for bikes of this time were 32mm. Seeing as how the seals were in good condition, but leaking a significant amount of oil, I am guessing the previous own made the mistake of installing 32mm seals instead of 31.5mm.

Luckily, a quick call to www.domiracer.com found the exact 31.5mm seals for a very reasonable price! They should be arriving by the end of this week.

While waiting, I continued on with some cosmetic cleaning. The photos should more than speak for themselves. The first is the aluminum dust shields. These thread to the top of the lower fork legs. Another interesting design feature, typical of 1960's bikes, the fork springs are external instead of today's internal springs. This required a form of shielding.

A little Mother's Mag/Alum Polish can work wonders! All it took was some elbow grease and a little time. I was very happy with the finished product.

The same treatment was applied to the lower fork legs.

Finally, the inner fork tubes needed some light surface cleaning. For this I used some 320 grit wet/dry sand paper. This was very effective at removing the very minor surface corrosion that polish would not.

Now it is just a matter of waiting for the seals to arrive and picking up some 20W fork oil at the local bike shop. I am also beginning my search for adequate steering bearings. The original duck's used a loose arrangement of 48, 3/16th inch steel balls in upper and lower race. Now that I have the specific dimensions, finding a contemporary roller type bearing should be kinda easy. lol.

Wrapping it up...

Little progress made today. Due to home work and Karen coming home tomorrow, the garage has had little attention today.

What I did accomplish is shown below.

The wrap is 2" black Thermo with stainless steel clamps holding it all together.

Slow day in the garage...

Academia caught up with me today. After spending the morning getting new tires installed on Karen's car, I spent a significant portion of the day doing homework. Exciting, eh?


But I did sneak out to the garage for a little bit.


I began working on the front end today! First step...take it all apart and inspect everything. I pulled the forks, triple clamp, front brakes and wheel bearings out. So far, so good. With the addition of the new brake shoes and a small dab of high-temp grease on the pinion, they were done.


The wheel bearings and speedo drive unit looked great too. No excessive play detected.


The next step will be to take apart the forks. I can tell they need a rebuilding already as the fork wipers are leaving a thin film of oil. The springs were clean though, with no rust or distortion.


Attached are a couple pics of the process.

Luckily there was not a shortage of screwdrivers on hand.

The engine stand was fabricated from scrap 2x4's. Cheap and it works.

Tomorrow after the homework is done, I will be getting into the forks.

Rear brake assembly

Well, first priority yesterday was to take care of Karen's car. I replaced her front brake pads and rotors, spark plugs, air filter and topped off all the fluids. And the rest of the afternoon was spent tending to the yard...welcome to suburbia! lol.


Now, onto the duc. Solving the rear brake has left me scratching my head for some time. So I figured best to just dive in and figure it out on the fly. I had a working brake in the wheel hub, a cable and a tab on the left rear set. I just had to figure out how to tie it all together. Originally I was going to weld a small piece of tubing to support the cable. But then my neighbor Craig suggested using a small piece of triangle to better support the cable end. Brilliant! lol.


I drilled a hole in a small piece of steel tubing and tapped it to M5 to act as a cable end catch. I then welded a small piece of steel to it to mount to the rearset eyelet.

Next was to fabricate a support for the cable to weld to the frame. This had to be robust as it would supporting the downward force of my foot pressing on the pedal.

This is where the triangle idea came into play. I measured some rough dimensions and was sure to leave plenty of excess that could be trimmed away. I welded two pieces of angle together at 90 degrees. I then welded a third piece of 90 degree L bar to support the end of the cable. In this L bar, I drilled a hole for the cable to be routed through.

The cut away piece is just wide enough to allow the cable to pass through, while the hole is wide enough to catch the sheathing.

I trimmed the lengths as necessary and filed it down to ensure everything was straight. From there I welded the assembly to the frame and made the final adjustments to the cable. In the end, the assembly fit and works perfectly!

Here are some pictures of the final product!

To finish up the evening, I welded the mounting tab to the top of the rear fender. Everything is buttoned up and I am one step closer to kicking the motor over for a ride!

The next steps will be to sort out the front end and wrap the exhaust system. A box from JC Whitney should be coming tomorrow, so I will eagerly be watching for the FedEx guy while doing homework.

Covering the backside...

Ladies and Gentlemen! It looks like we are beginning to have something here!!

Well, I had to turn atleast one bolt today, so I decided to knock out the rear fender. Thank you to someone for finding a "vintage ducati fender" in their neighbor's garage! I was just about to start scouring the internet.

This is the fender after some work. I trimmed three inches from the trailing edge and cut the ears off. Since I was going to add a tab at the apex for mounting, the ears were not needed.

The trailing edge was trimmed so that after the tail light and license plate were mounted, just enough would be showing to see the black fender with the red/silver trim.

Good news on the tail light, turn signal delima! I found some used Triumph Bonneville turnsignals and a trick little DOT brake light on ebay for the cheap. The oval brake light, 3 1/2" x 2" fit the contour of the rear frame perfectly. Once they arrive, I will fabricate a single mount to support it, the turn signals and license plate and attach it to the frame.

Below are finished pictures of the fender. Of course, this will be painted black with the red and silver trim, as seen in the photoshop picture.

While wifey is away...

...the garage rat shall play!

Well, as the title eluded to, Karen is out of town this week, so I spent a long day in the garage on Saturday. Looking forward to another long day tomorrow before I head back into to work.

Things accomplished yesterday:

Fabricated and welded mounting lugs for the coils. This was not very complicated, just time consuming using only a hand drill.

First, I built a jig with the mounting lugs the correct distance apart. I clamped this assembly to the bike and welded away!

Next, I welded the lugs to the frame, removed the jig and mounted the coils.

And the finished product...

The next step was to figure out how to support the fuel tank. The fuel tank had a pair of eyelets along the front edge, but no means to support in the vertical direction.

For this, I fabricated a "T" and affixed a piece of high-density foam to the top edge. The foam is intended to dampen vibrations and prevent fuel foaming. This sounded easy, but it involved a lot of blind cutting. Sand a little, still too tall, sand a little, still too tall, etc. I was able to use a straight edge to get in the ball park, but fine tuning was required.

The finished support is shown below.

Finally, all the bolts were tightened up and everything lined up!

I used a level across the fuel port to gauge level. As you can see, I hit it pretty close to the mark.

And finally, I cleaned up the edges of the homemade exhaust system and hit it with a couple coats of bar-b-que hi temp paint. I am not concerned with the visual quality of the paint as everything will be wrapped over, it was rust prevention that was on my mind.

Now onto figuring out what I am doing about the rear fender and tail light.

The beginning

After some emails and suggestions, I have decided to begin blogging about this "adventure." How many eyes will ever look at these pages, we will never know. Here goes anyways.

The story begins mid summer of 2006. I was half way through flight school and the bug bit me. I had been riding motorcycles for the past several years, even building several myself, but at that time had none. I began flipping through the pages of the local cycle trader to see what the area had to offer.

Right away, a 1965 Triumph Tiger caught my attention. The bike was fully restored and in running order. What fun would that be? This first listing though is what put my mind on the trail of something classic.

After a month of watching ebay and the local listings, I find a man who is selling out his project bike. A 1967 Ducati 350 Sebring...in a thousand parts. Perfect. All that was required to assembly was endless hours of blood, sweat and labor. Even better!

After some haggling on the phone and some emails, I had a shipping container holding the better part of a two-wheeled dream en route to sunny Enterprise, Alabama.

Now finally we get to some pictures! This first one reflects the assortment of parts and boxes in the condition I received them. There are several more boxes not in the photo, but you get the idea.

As can be seem from the pictures, I had a fairly solid start...or so I thought. Like they say, the devil is in the details.

The first afternoon, I threw the big pieces together to get an idea of what I had.

This would had been the direction had my intentions been to build a museum piece. My dreams were just the opposite...build a nasty little cafe bike with some Ducati pedigree behind her.

The original owner claimed to have had the engine rebuilt, but in the interest of doing the job right, I pulled the motor apart and checked everything over. Gears, shift drum, piston, valves and all looked brand new. The motor was beautiful and ready to run.

Then came the flight school graduation and subsequent military schools and bouncing around. She sat in storage for a year while I got my life in order.

This passed April I had the honor of marrying the most amazing woman I have ever met...who just happened to come with a garage.

And this brings us to the current times.

My first order of business was to fabricate a subframe to mount the solo cafe seat I cam across. This involved a great deal of lining up the pieces, checking the level and factoring in a little swag. This was also my first voyage into welding, so it was an adventure.

As can be seen in the pictures, the finished product came out nicely. I used 3/4" steel tubing for the structure and 1' angle for the mounting ears. 4 Dzus fasteners are used to secure the seat to the subframe. Funny...a minute to type this but two weeks of effort to make it real.

Next is a picture showing the seat attached; obviously sans padding and paint.

To make the level accurate, you can see the blocks I added to the front wheel to compensate for the rear pitbull stand. I added about 4 degrees forward cant to compensate for suspension settling while seated on the bike. The seat pad is 3/4" foam from sharkskinz and will be added after painting.

The next task was the exhaust system. The 30 pount chrome bazooka would not do with the lean cafe look. So I was left to fabricate my own.

I picked up the finest, cheapest, smallest muffler JC Whitney had to offer and went from there. After a lot of leveling, cutting and sanding, I was ready to weld together all the pieces and end with the system you see picutred. The final step will be to seal it up with some black grill paint and finally wrap it with black colored Thermo wrap.

And for an overall idea...

While I wait for the next package from JC Whitney, the plan is to work on the fuel tank supports.

I plan on using a single rubber link to secure the backside of the tank, but must fabricate some tabs to support it up away from the frame.

Check back for more pics of that!