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November 27, 2008
Guest Blog: Brian Brown's F1 Saga (A San Francisco Tale)
[This tale surfaced on the 851-888 board in response to crackhead vandalism of motorcycles in San Francisco. Evidently people are breaking off sparkplugs to make little crack pipes. Who knew? Today, Brian Brown shares the tale of his F1. If you lived in SF in the 80's as I did, then you may know some of the characters. — Ed.]
Set the way-back machine to the year 1986. I stopped by the local Ducati dealership in Berkeley, California: TT Motors. There on the small showroom floor is the most awesome motorcycle that I had ever laid my eyes upon, a brand new Ducati F1b. It was everything that I could ever hope for, a modern street legal (well in some parts of the world) Ducati TT1 road-racer.
At the time, the selling price of $7195 was more that I could afford. But I asked the owner, John Gallivan if I could sit on it anyway. As I imagined myself roaring around Laguna Seca (hopefully not making any audible sound effects with my mouth), John told me that I would never be able to ride one. Right then I vowed to prove him wrong.
About a year later, issue #51 of the DIOC newsletter appeared in my mailbox. There in the classified ads was a mint condition F1b in Denver, CO with only 1200km on the clock. The owner Paul Greaves wanted to trade it for a Darmah or 900ss plus cash. Not having either, I thought that he might deal for straight cash. I rang him up and we settled on a price of $5500. I was a little worried about buying a bike sight unseen, but Paul as-waged my fears. He said that he would crate up the bike and ship it out to me. If I opened up the crate and didn't like it, I could just pay the freight to ship it back to him. If I liked it, I would wire him the funds and he would send me the title. Needless to say that it was love at first sight when I lifted the lid.
I couldn't wait to ride it, but there was one problem. In order to fit the motorcycle in the crate (some metal framed Kawasaki crate), Paul had to remove the oil filter. No problem, I just pop over to TT Motors and get a new one. No, they didn't have one, nor did the other local dealer Barber Brothers. A call down to Pro Italia revealed the ugly truth, there was a national backorder on oil filters! No, this couldn't be! I called down to Cagiva North America in Gardena, California and the next thing I knew I was talking to the only parts guy, Darrell. I told him of my plight. He said that yes, they were on backorder, but he happened to have one filter squirreled away if I wanted it.
A couple of days later, I was on the road. But there was a problem, the bike had little power below 4000rpm. Thinking the bike might have been rejetted for the altitude of Denver, CO, I called every Ducati dealer that I knew of to try and get jetting information for the F1. None of them had any information, some said that the F1 was a race-bike and that it was normal to not have power below 4000rpm. Finally I talked to John Hoffman (RIP) at Cycle Specialties of Athens, Ga. Having raced an F1b, he was very knowledgeable about the bike and had the factory manual with the correct jetting specs. I raised the needles a couple of notches and the bike was fixed!
For a little over a year I was in heaven, having my own personal semi-legal TT1 race-bike for the street. I even bought a set of Dainese Marco "Lucky" Lucchinelli leathers to match the bike (though I couldn't find the AGV Lucchinelli helmet). It only took Cagiva North America six months to send me a shop manual and a new headlight lens (the original was cracked in transit during shipping).
March 5, 1989, I came down from my condo apartment to give my friend a ride to the airport. There in my carport was an empty space, only a broken Kryptonite lock and a popped ignition lock cylinder remained as evidence as to what had transpired. My beloved Ducati had been stolen. I was devastated.
Over the next year I tacked up wanted posters at every motorcycle shop in the area. Whenever I saw an F1b, I had to go look at it to make sure that it wasn't my bike. My girlfriend put up with me going on an on about the bike. She couldn't replace the bike, but when my birthday came around, she made a cake with a perfect F1b drawn in icing on the top.
June 3, 1990, Kawasaki was sponsoring Kawasaki Day at Alice's Restaurant in Woodside, CA. I didn't really want to go, but they were giving away an EX500 and my friend wanted a chance to win the bike. As I walked around, I noticed an F1b sitting at the gas pumps, it was running and the rider was getting set to ride it away. When I got about 10 feet away from it, I realized that it was my old bike. I turned to a friend and told him to get a cop. I then walked over to the bike and hit the kill switch. The rider asked what was I doing, and I told him that it was my bike. As we argued back an forth the woman that owned the gas station told us to take it off of her property. The rider started to push the bike faster and faster, until I reached over and grabbed the front brake lever. Just then, a CHP officer showed up. He listened to both of our stories, then proceeded to handcuff the rider and lock him in the back of the police cruiser.
It was the hit of the show, everyone congratulated me on recovering the bike. Many people had stories of having had bikes stolen, but never found. The crowd urged the cops to let the suspect out and we would deal with him in our own way. Since the bike was evidence of a crime it had to be impounded, and a normal old-fashioned sling type tow-truck showed up to haul it away. I cringed at the thought of my beautiful bike's fairing cracking as they tried to strap it to the back of the sling. Fortunately, Brian Halton of CityBike was there to save the day. He offered to transport it to the impound yard in the CityBike van, following the tow-truck so that the tow driver was still paid for the tow, everyone was happy, well except for the dirtbag in the back of the police cruiser.
The insurance company had paid me off in full for the bike (I won't go into how hard it was to get them to do that, let's just say that it a Herculean task), so they now owned the bike that I had just recovered for them. I called them up to let them know what I had done, and to find out how to buy the bike back. They said that it would be auctioned off, and that I had to be the high bidder in order to get it back.
Then came the bad news, the officer in charge of the case said that the dirtbag had proof that he had bought a new frame for the bike. Since he was the legal owner of the frame, the impound yard was to dismantle the bike and return the frame to him. Then more bad news, the insurance company changed impound yards that they do business with, now what was left of my bike was to be transported from Redwood city to Rancho Cordova, CA, almost 100 miles away. But "Don't worry" the insurance rep. told me "Your car will be taken good car of". Then even more bad news, it seems that I would not be allowed to bid on my bike. There was a scam going around where someone would insure a new car, strip it of all of its parts, dump it in a field and report it stolen. The insurance company would pay them off and then they would buy it back at auction and reassemble it. Now their policy was changed to not let original owner bid on their old vehicles.
I showed up at the auction and had a friend who ran a salvage yard bid on my bike. When we got there, what was left of my bike was sitting outside on a pallet in a pile of gravel. They had lost the gauges, electrics, swingarm, shock, and all controls. Basically all that remained was the fairings, tailsection, wheels, forks, brakes and engine. The paintwork on everything was badly scratched. I was the high bidder at $175.
A few weeks went by and I received another call from the officer in charge of the case, it seems that the dirtbag needed money for lawyers fees, and was I interested in buying the frame back for $500. I told him sure and told him to give Mr. Dirtbag my phone number. Dirtbag called and a time/place was set to meet for the swap. I packed my girlfriend's Ruger .357 Blackhawk into my bag just in case, but Mr Dirtbag flaked and never showed up. Mack at Munroe Motors called me and said that Mr. Dirtbag had called them to see if they were interested in buying the frame. I told them to buy it and I would pay them for it. Pat Munroe R.I.P. wanted to make $100 on the deal, which irked me a little as they were the ones to sell Mr. Dirtbag the replacement frame, even though I had F1b Wanted posters plastered up on their wall. You would have thought that they could have put two and two together.
When I got the frame, I was delighted to see that it still had the shock, swingarm, footpegs and controls still attached to it. I guess that the impound yard didn't know what the work "frame" meant. I purchased all new decals for the bike and had John Burkhard repaint everything. He did a fantastic job, it looked perfect. I started calling every Ducati shop on the planet to find the missing parts, fortunately this was before most people had started to restore F1s and many racebike take-offs were still around.
I had the bike 98% done when I started to lose interest in it. The magazines were raving about the new 1992 900ss and I had to have one. I ended up selling my 1977 wire wheel 900ss and the F1b for $4500 each. It was one of the most stupid things that I have ever done. The new 900ss was the biggest piece of shit that I have ever owned. If you looked up the word "Lemon" in the dictionary, there was a picture of my new 900ss. I should have known that it was a bad sign that my new bike was delivered to me with an empty tank of gas, not even enough to get out of the parking lot. It's valve guides wore out before the first service, had major clutch problems, broken head studs, bent rear axle adjusters, improperly assembled carburetors, etc.
In 1994 a work-mate of mine saw an ad in the SF Chronicle for a Ducati F1b. $5500 later, he was the new owner of what turned out to be my old bike. For the next 12 years he took wonderful care of the bike. Installed a Fox shock to replace the horrible Marzocchi unit, revalved the front forks and did general maintenance and preservation/restoration of its condition.
Two weeks ago, I came into some unexpected money. I was thinking of what to do with it when the F1b popped into my head. I stopped by my old workplace to have a chat with my mate about the bike. He was a little surprised, as he was going to put the bike up for auction on Ebay that very day. Needless to say that it is now back where it belongs, in my garage. I took it for a ride the other day for the first time in almost 20 years. It was as if someone had turned back time, just as I remembered it, will all of its little quirks.
I'll never sell it again. Now if I could only find my old 1977 900SS.
Ducati Forza!
Brian Brown
Here's a shot of it in my truck the day I brought it back home:
Posted by Underblog at November 27, 2008 7:54 AM
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