[DesmoDog]

Hey! I thought about posting an intro in the general section but figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and post it as a project thread. Warning - I tend to ramble about this stuff so this may be a long one...

I just stumbled onto this site a few days ago and decided to sign up. My main interest/aspiration is to build a sporty powered cafe racer, but for now I already have too many projects so I need to finish up one or three of those before I embark on yet another build!

As my username suggests, I'm a bit partial to a certain Italian brand. I've got six of them right now, three of which are project bikes. The one project I have going on right now that fits this site best is probably my 1966 Ducati Monza Jr. I picked it up in a package deal with a '66 250 Monza. (The 250 is going to become a more serious "cafe racer" but it's still in parts gathering mode)

Here's a shot of the 160 in "as bought" condition.

As you can probably tell, 1966 was not a high point of Italian style. This bike was mostly complete but I'm tossing a lot of it. I went through a lot of ideas on what to build with it, but ended up with something along the lines of this:

When that pic was taken I was planning to remove the valance panels from the front fender to match the rear one, but then I decided i liked them there... but what about the rear fender? Time to find a valanced rear fender too.

Soon enough I made a deal with a buddy that included an NOS valanced rear fender, along with a better tail light. I'm not sure I'll be able to use the tail light, but here's how the back end ill look if I can;

 

[DesmoDog]

D'oh! Managed to hit "post" before I was done... oh well, here's the rest of the info.

I am a little further along on the project now, but it has stalled lately. I hit some snags with the tank and made a couple screw ups which have derailed things, but I'm fighting to get back underway now.

Here's a few more recent pictures. I got some NOS 17" flanged alloy rims from Cosmo, and laced those up to the stock hubs with some SS spokes from Buchanan's. Colors are black and pearl silver from House of Kolor.

If there's interest I'll set up a real project thread to cover more details. A lot of it has been modded, but most of those will go unnoticed by everyone other than the few people who are familiar with Monza Jrs!

Here's a link with more info for anyone interested:
http://www.teamyikes.com/Ducati160home.html

Oh yeah, one more thing (yeah, i figured out how to edit posts). Here's the last project I did. This one WAS going to be a cafe racer but I changed my mind.

 

[leo]

Desmo-
Cool little bike to cafe. I've always dug those little ducs. Great looking project so far, good luck.

Cheers,
Leo

 

[TonyDanger]

Wow you're old ugly duc sure turned out nice as a restored piece. Looks great, and looks like this one is headed in the same direction. Good luck, hope this one turns out as cool as the last.

 

[DesmoDog]

Thanks guys.

I'm going out of town for work tonight so I'll probably have some time with nothing much to do... I think I'll start seperate threads for the 160 and the 350 builds. Lots of info on Japanese bikes here, time for the Italians to be heard from!

In the meantime, here's a little preview of my 350 Bitsa. The "before" shot. Behold the mighty 250 Monza! Looks a lot like the 160's before shot...

It's been pretty much stripped at this point, I've been stealing parts off of it for another project. About the only progress made towards putting it back together is the front wheel.

So far I've scrounged up a 35mm front fork off a Pantah, a 350 engine from a Sebring, flanged alloy rims, a Mach 1 style tank, the Oldani replica brake shown above, and, um, that's about it.

Plans are to get a Super Sport styled tail for it from Airtech. They have the parts to make a single cylinder Super Sport look-alike, I'll probably use the front fender and maybe the rear from that kit too. Then either a 1/4 or full fairing for it???