MY FIRST DUCATI and YOURS
As already mentioned, my first encounter with a Ducati single up close and personal was while employed at a local fix-all-but-Harley's bike shop in Dublin, where we specialized in Hondas, and later all sorts of British machines (and Ducati’s) when Chris Quinn was employed as the Service Manager. My first experience riding one had me aboard a 350 "cafe racer", as it was then referred to, screaming south along Foothill Road through Pleasanton en route to Quinn's house in Sunol at speeds exceeding 100 mph during the heat of the summer, me clad in jeans, boots and a T-shirt, plus a full-face Shoei. My next outing would be in late '74 during a local 2-hour MX marathon where I'd be teamed up with childhood friend Steve Woolverton on a rag-tag 350cc Scrambler; we finished third overall. Some years later I would race Quinn's 250 Diana in the AFM 250 Modified Production class for nearly the whole season, though only at Sears Point, as neither of us had the backing to go south and pick-up points. My best finish of the season was a 4th, my competition being, among other Ducati’s, Yamaha RD250s, Can-Am 250s, and the X6 Hustler. The AFM production rules did permit modification, but a number of restrictions. Still, the Diana 250 was permitted to up-date and backdate along the model range, hence permitting us a number of advantages, two of which included a megaphone exhaust and clip-on bars. However, as far as engine mods went, it wasn't the AFM that restricted us, but Quinn himself. Hell, I couldn't even get him to fit new forks seals, instead Chris would just drain the forks, then re-fill them with the correct amount of fluid and hope for the best. Having known then what I know now, I'm more that positive I could have won a few of those races. Discussing the matter with Quinn would result in many tails of Ducati’s and their performance, though that never solved my problem. In the end, Eric Tucker and I would sit in my garage and R&R the cylinderhead many times as we adjusted the cam timing, then screamed it down the street in order to see what result we'd obtained. The next race I'd arrive ready to roll, though very careful as to keeping quite about the mod we'd carried out. By season end we still weren't competitive, sure a 4th place, but that wasn't due to the mods Eric and I had carried out. Instead the Ducati single had made me a better rider, as without power one tends try and make up for lost time by not slowing the thing down, thus I was able to put together consistent lap times each and every lap, something I'd yet to do with my Triumph 750 Triple & Twin. To prove the point; At years end I would pull the Triumph T140 out of hiding and enter the 750 Production race, practice alone had my lap times dropping nearly a full 10 seconds as I began riding the Twin like the little Duc single, flat out. A lot can be said for Ducati’s as a learning machine, or any other little tiddler of similar displacement and power.
Again, I purchased my first Ducati single in the early 1980s for the fat sum of $50.00, and what a junker. Sometime in its former life this machine left Italy as a complete running/ride able machine, now all that was left was stuffed into one large vegetable-shipping box. Why we purchased it was a mystery to me, I seem to remember my Dad wanting to restore it that is until he saw it. At the time I was too busy opening West Coast British (in April 1981) and racing my T140 to bother with it, my newest racing gimmick being a new AFM class called Formula-150, in short, a Honda 100/125 class. Thus at the time I was buying up old Honda SL100/125 bits at an alarming rate in order to supply myself with enough bits to build and maintain a couple of machines. The class went bust however and I stuck with the Twin and took up BoTT racing. As time progressed Chris Quinn would convince the AFM into allowing time for a vintage class, and by 1983 it was moving right along. In October of that year I would receive an invitation from a Dennis Zimmer in Las Vegas to attend a vintage race that was be planned for November, I was asked to bring the '29 Sunbeam. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden I get this silly idea that I'm going to race a Ducati 250 at Vegas, and not Quinn's. Looking to the corner of the shop where my basket-o-bits Ducati lay, I had the Ford light bulb appear over my head... "I can build this one!" I said to myself, "no problem, I can have it ready in time, we've rebuilt Triumph engines over night, why not a simple little Ducati?” With that, the race was on, as was my first ground-up Ducati project.
Three weeks to the day before the Vegas race was upon us the project began, and I can't think of a better project to use as a tool for describing what is involved when building a racer, and building one quickly. In less than three weeks the little red Ducati single was completed and ready to race. Once we arrived at Las Vegas, a 1.6 mile, 6-turn course, final gearing and jetting would be necessary during practice. With race time upon us, the little 250 made good and came home with a 4th place finish first time out. Couldn't ask much more than that, maybe a 1st. With that said, I will now go into detail as to how one should tackle such a project. |
