May 24, 2009
Binned: A Squid's Tale
Driving to Sears yesterday to pick up a mid-section toolbox to house my new goodies (see post below), I notice a motorcyclist on a wide-tired sportbike, fender eliminator, LED taillights, etc zipping through traffic, weaving to and fro. Minutes later, I pull up behind a stopped car in the right hand lane. I notice two people trying to move a hulk of a motorcycle off the road; they are not having much luck. Plastic bodywork littered the lane 30 feet ahead of where they were handling the motorcycle.
As the car ahead of me pulls around the pair, I see squid and helper trying to push the bike off the road. The fact that the rider was OK (thank God for helmets and protective gear) after having dropped his bike (or driven it into a curb) may have allowed me to grin more than I should have. After all, we are both motorcyclists. I am just glad that I am not that kind of motorcyclist.
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April 16, 2009
Blog Neglect
So much and so little has happened since last post. I took the F1 up to Madrid, where she would not start due to some wires pulling loose. Also, the tail light had rattled completely loose and was hanging by its wires. In the midst of fettling with the wires, the headlight switch broke. After much tweaking of said wires with duct tape and some borrowed tools, the F1 came back to life and ran fitfully down the hill as far as Tijeras. I then called for help in the form of Roomie with Iris.
Clue to a "House"-style differential diagnosis: The battery had a charge when it began to not start in Madrid, for the headlight and tail light were how we could tell whether we were getting juice. That being said, the battery was not strong enough to turn over the motor.
I have heard tell that on old Italian bikes, most charging and ignition troubles can be traced to poor connections, and I would be surprised if the F1 did not have more than its share of bum wiring. In fact I know that it does and I have been responsible for some of it!
I knew since the bike arrived that it needed to be wired; now wiring is on the front burner. First thing to do is replace whatever cooked wiring I find and update the connections with modern, waterproof types.
In other news, I am preparing to take on the Morini 500 restoration. One of my repeat Morini Ricambi customers has a beautiful black Morini 500. I have to replace the swing-arm bushings on the bike anyway, and the paint is looking pretty faded. Once the F1 is dialed-in (just using the term with that bike tells me that it may be a while), breaking down the Morini for a cosmetic makeover is next on the docket.
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December 12, 2008
Auction Curiosities
A friend of mine recently put up a dearly beloved machine on eBay, and the auction bids did not meet the reserve price. However, after the auction ended, several of the parties and people watching the auction became very interested in what he had to sell. It turns out that he ended up selling the bike outside of eBay for more than he would have settled for during the auction.
This week I had a similar experience. For the past three weeks, I have been trying to sell a license plate tag (Minnesota, 1957) on eBay. The first two times I listed it, a few watchers tracked the auction but never bid. I lowered the price and the shipping amount, and now the sale price (with 12 hours to go) is double what somewhat could have had it for the past two weeks.
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December 8, 2008
Crossing Paths
When first I obtained the 851 and got it serviced, a colleague of mine and I took it out to celebrate. Rather, I rode the 851 and he drove his Porsche Spyder replica. Gear-headed geekdom is small enough here that I recently met a fellow who knows my colleague through the Roadrunner Chapter of the PCA.
It also turns out that this fellow has a Ducati ST4s that he is interested in selling. I am interested in buying it, since as a two-up tourer the F650 is somewhat underpowered. When I ran into him a second time at Coffee at Dawn on Sunday, he said "Let me know when you are ready to pull the trigger on the ST4." He seemed to understand that I was still in hock for the F1. On the other hand, the net cost after selling the F650 would only be several thousand dollars. But still. Maybe I have to check my calendar to find a month with three paychecks in it. And eat nothing but beans and rice for a long, long while.
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December 3, 2008
Near Miss
I was walking outside of my office building downtown when I noticed the following.
A bus was pulled over dropping off passengers. A large motorcycle—Gold Wing most likely—carrying a large person unhelmeted in shirt sleeves passes the bus in what remains of the lane. The bus driver, not seeing the motorcyclist passing starts to move off from the sidewalk. The motorcyclist honks his horn, swerves into the oncoming lane of traffic to avoid the bus, and then shouts "Mother----!" He continues along Copper Av, having just barely avoided an accident that easily could have been avoided altogether.
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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:
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November 1, 2008
Small Worlds
When I began looking in earnest for a Ducati F1, I turned to a contact from the Morini and the Ducati 851 internet presences (as you can imagine, the best of groups dedicated to these machines have rooted themselves in completely different webspaces). At the time, my fellow 851/F1/Morini buddy asked me if I knew a fellow by the name of Emiliano here in Albuquerque. I did not, though I had heard his name mentioned earlier as someone in the area knowledgeable in moto italiane.
Much later, when I posted the Ducati 750 for sale on Craigslist, a potential buyer came over to check it out. He asked me if I knew Emiliano, and once again I acknowledged my ignorance. However, this time I got a number. Not Emiliano's number, but the number of a mutual friend who had his number.
Weeks later, once I had given up on selling the Sport through Craigslist and was awaiting delivery of the F1, I called the heretofore mythical Emiliano on Saturday. I suppose I called him just to introduce myself and talk Italian bikes. I had also taken to heart the seller of the F1's counsel to seek out a local who also had one of these bikes, to confirm the best routing of cables, wiring, and hoses. Emiliano and I talked F1's and Morini's, and it turns out that he had once purchased the Benelli spares of a dealer no longer in the biz. What remained of it was sold to a German fellow. He also passed on buying a few still-in-the-crate F1's here in Albuquerque, when he could have gotten them for a song. But isn't that always the case? Emiliano had had Morini's in the past, several 3½'s. He presently has a Montjuich, and is on the hunt (passively, I expect) for an SP5.
When I was reciting the list of bikes in the garage (what are we up to now, seven?), I slipped in that PJ's had just sold the Sport for me. Emiliano replied, "I know that bike, I have it here now in my shop!" Now that is a small world. Later in the day, I called him a second time to ask how much fork oil to put in the forks of the Benelli. He recommended 180cc to begin with and see how it worked. It worked fine.
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October 27, 2008
F1, Finally
After 7 years of searching, mas o menos, I have finally found a reasonably priced Ducati F1. The timing is horrible, as our investments—like everyone else's—are cratering. On the other hand, the national calamity is causing many folks to reevaluate their collections. I hate to think that I am profiting from someone's misfortune, but their is little doubt that the marketplace for vintage bikes is taking as much of a hit as any other investment.
Not that I plan to ever sell the F1, once it arrives here. As I mentioned above, I have looked for one of these for several years. The last time one sold at a price I could afford ($1000 more than this one) was back in 2000-2001.
Though the price is certainly right, I am concerned about the track history of this particular example. However, a fellow Morini-list and 851-list Ducatista emailed me that the modifications this bike has are ones that cost alone has prevented him from making to his own F1. He loves his F1 so much that he told his wife that he wants his ashes to be placed in the gas tank so that they can be buried together.
Now comes the excruciating part: arranging and paying for delivery, viewing the bike in person, and of course getting it all dialed in. I am viewing this as a long-term relationship but really what I want to do is take it for a spin before it gets too dreadfully cold here.
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October 26, 2008
Further Adventures With Roomie
It seems that all the riding I have been doing lately has been with Roomie. I suppose that she is making up for lost time. In any case, the riding has been spectacular.
Two weeks ago, we went for a day trip on the Chimayó Santuario - Peñasco - Dixon Loop. That trip (263 miles total, a new Roomie record!) was full of fall colors. However, Roomie had not worn quite enough layers and so she declined the High Road to Taos in favor of a quick descent into the canyon through Picuris Pueblo and Dixon.
Notwithstanding the chill of that ride, her enthusiasm for going up to Taos remained unabated and so after consideration of the clothing we could fit in the saddle bags (as it turns out a useful constraint) she was ready to take off Friday morning for a day ride to Taos and a day ride back. Instead of stopping at Santuario for tamales at Leona's as we had two weeks prior, we continued on NM 503 past the turn-off for Santuario and toward Cundiyo and Santa Cruz Lake. After dining at Sugar Nymph's Bistro in Peñasco (well worth the drive), we decided to take the High Road into Taos rather than the Mora - Angel Fire scenic route. The High Road turned out to be even shorter of a ride than I had predicted in Peñasco, taking us all of 45 minutes to complete.
We arrived at the budget-date hotel seriously early, and so we did a quick loop around Ranchitos Road to La Posta and got stuck in Taos' now infamous traffic before visiting a friend. Once the visiting concluded, Roomie joined me in the hot tub (another first!) back at the motel. She is now more prepared to entertain the idea of putting a hot tub behind the studio having experienced the benefits after a long day in the saddle.
Next day, the F650 barely wheezed up enough juice to get going. Once warm, it started just fine. By the time we were done visiting our friend in town, it was noon. We took US 64 out to Angel Fire (the stretch from town to the 585 cut off was lovelier than I remembered) and NM 434 south to Mora. In Mora, we decided to head back to Dixon (Roomie's favorite part of the ride—she must like the canyon) and lunch at Sugar's by the Rio Grande. It did not disappoint.
We really lucked out on the meals this trip. Lunch at Sugar Nymph's was excellent, dinner (Kung Pao Scallops!) at Hunan Chinese also delicious, and the barbecue beef sandwich at Sugar's in Embudo Canyon also excellent. We look forward to next season and more meals at these places.
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August 4, 2008
Bernalillo and Back
Under normal circumstances, riding to Bernalillo and back along 2nd St and NM 313 would not be an especially noteworthy event. This time, however, Roomie accompanied me on the back of the Ducati. Two weeks ago, Roomie and I went out and purchased her a helmet just in case she wanted to ever take a ride with me. Later that day she surprised me by stating that she was ready to go for a short ride on the Benelli, by far the most approachable of the bikes in the garage. We zipped up 2nd St to Alameda, across the the river, and over to the Indian restaurant. We both had a great time on that ride, and we left it at that.
Saturday, she was not sure if she would feel as safe on the Ducati. As a stop gap measure, we drove once around the block, and she was astounded at how much safer she felt on it versus the Benelli. What two decades in age and three decades in technology will do for one's confidence! Anyway, we took the 750 Sport to the Range Cafe in Bernalillo, Roomie borrowing the Vanson perforated leather jacket while I sweated in the Schott Perfecto. But we both thoroughly enjoyed the ride, and Roomie did not even flinch when we passed a very slowly moving vehicle on the way home.
Before we take a ride up to Madrid (or Heaven forbid, Santa Fe) we will have to find Roomie a proper jacket and perhaps some gloves. Certainly, this new interest of hers in motorcycling has given us much more to talk about, and I for one am looking forward to where it goes from here.