This is my first ducati and I just purchased it a few days ago. It is a 1995 Ducati 900 SS CR. It has only 2900 miles on it and is in fantastic condition. It has been sitting for about 5 years in a garage. The fuel petcock is plugged and I heard that it cannot be cleaned and must be replaced. I have already replaced the fuel pump. Also when I bypass the petcock it barely runs and will not go above idle. I ran some seafoam through it and it will run but is very slugish. Other than cleaning the tank and lines, cleaning the carbs and syncronizing them, is there anything else I should look out for.
95 900 Supersport Newbi Questions
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wow, what a great score. Those years are notorious for fuel tank rusting however. I've seen a lot of info here regarding fixes, but for starters remove your gas cap assembly and take a goooood look indside at the lower portion of the tank. Maybe you already have if you replaced the fuel pump and pickup? Regardless you'll need to clean and coat the tank with a liner of some sort or another.
If there was rust in there, which it sounds like there is from the lack of fuel situation, your carbs will need a complete disassembly and cleaning. Also replace all lines, petcock, filter, bag, etc.
Definatly sounds like a lack of fuel situation though.
If there was rust in there, which it sounds like there is from the lack of fuel situation, your carbs will need a complete disassembly and cleaning. Also replace all lines, petcock, filter, bag, etc.
Definatly sounds like a lack of fuel situation though.
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Did you replace your fuel filter as well? These are notorious for clogging with rust particles and starving the engine of fuel. Hate to say it, but would be majorly surprised if there were not a significant amount of rust in the tank on a 95 900ss that had been sitting 5 years. Mine's a 96 and got it in similar shape from some pussy that never rode it and kept in garage... rust had eaten through one corner until it was pissing gas on a ride one day.
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There is a current thread on por-15... never used it but sounds like good stuff. There is a shop in Canada http://www.leakersgastanks.com/index.html that did mine for $200 unpainted plus shipping. Parts store? EBAY.
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You are going to have to pay for the entire bike to be gone through. There are far too many "things" that may have gone bad, things you may easily overlook.jcassonjr said:
It might cost you $1000-$1200 to have things professionally done, but in the end you have a decent bike.
I would not rely on yourself to just "unclog" the fuel issues, so to speak, and then think you caught it all.
By the way, one time I bought an old Yamaha for $200 that had been sitting in a guys garage for about 10 years. I was able to start it and run it home at about 25MPH. I was surprised, as I could see the fuel lines were yellow and clogged. The pipes were clogged too, with gunk. At 25mph it was running slugglishly.
About a mile from my apartment I looked down and the engine was in flames.
I pulled over to the curb, more like BOLTED, jumped off the bike and watched the bike bonfire. The bike did not explode, was able to put out the fire with a garden hose that was on the lawn in front of the house where I had jumped off the bike. Turns out that the fuel line on the bottom of the gas tank had vibrated off [due to being hardened over the years] and gas was running out of the tank on to the engine, where it caught fire.
Lessons learned: The bike looked fine on visual inspection before I left. I also paid for my laziness on not getting a truck to haul the bike to a shop for inspection.
take my davice and go get a new battery and get one from a ducati dealer not a battery shop i got one at a battery shop which cross referenced the number and gave me an "equivilent" and now as per my thread in the forum i rode it once and the bike died in my driveway, aparently our bikes are picky about voltage mines a 96 900ss
I replaced the fuel line, fuel pump, fuel tap, fuel filter. I looked over and inspected the bike and it seems to be in superior cond. I was mainly thinking model specific items like the alt or transmission. I am taking the bike into the dealership to have them go through the carbs. I have replaced the battery already.
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REPLACE THE CAM BELTS. Check for cracks in the frame around the head stock, also look for cracks around the swing-arm pivot. Not trying to scare you, but some SS's were prone to these cracks. I've got 30,000 miles logged on my '96 ( bought in 2002 with 4,800), although I did have the frame crack at 6,000 miles (got lucky with free FULL factory replacement), it is a sound bike. I'm confident I'll see another 30,000. BTW, Welcome to your new addiction! Purchase price was just the down payment....
all in all the bikes are pretty durable. aside from rusting tanks, IMHO you can't go too wrong on a bike with that kind of mileage (or lack of). Everything can be fixed . Carbs MUST be torn down. They certainly sound clogged. Just make sure that tank is clean or all your new fuel system parts (carbs included) will be clogged in short order. Have the dealer do the belts, too, good call. My frame developed cracks around 10k, but was an easy weld up.
Rear spring rate is for about a 220lb rider, front oem setup is for about a 100lb rider, so I'd address the suspension once you get her running rite.
good luck, and keep us posted.
. Carbs MUST be torn down. They certainly sound clogged. Just make sure that tank is clean or all your new fuel system parts (carbs included) will be clogged in short order. Have the dealer do the belts, too, good call. My frame developed cracks around 10k, but was an easy weld up. Rear spring rate is for about a 220lb rider, front oem setup is for about a 100lb rider, so I'd address the suspension once you get her running rite.
good luck, and keep us posted.
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I must be the bearer of bad news, your friends are correct. The 900 SS SP CR models were not and are NOT fast bikes. They were never sold as screamers, for example, in the same class as superbikes.jcassonjr said:
I won't go into specifics, but the horsepower and other specs on your bike are way less than what your friends are probably riding. While your bike can hold its own off the line, in short bursts, or in the mountains, in terms of sheer power you are always going to be left behind when riding with your friends, or always be playing catch up.
I say all of the above under the assumption that your friends are riding liter bikes or even smaller, but more powerful, bikes such as the Yamaha R6.
Your 900 CR is a good first Ducati to get your feet wet and some experience on the road and riding bikes.
I have a 1996 900 SS SP with loads of mods. It's my classic bike, one that can still be bought at a bargain. I do not ride the 900 thinking that is can whip many bikes out there, in fact, it cannot. I treat it as a vintage motorcycle that becomes more and more a classic each year that goes by.
I have gone on record saying that the early 900 SS models are one of the best secret deals out there. Someday the bikes will start to increase in price as people try to snap them up.
On a personal note, I don't like the CR model. I'd buy some full fairings for it. Just my preference.
My sympathies if you bought the bike thinking that because it was a Ducati that that meant it was a super fast, bad ass bike. In comparison to today's bikes, say the last five years, it really is as your friends say, all show and no go.
Here are some pics of the 900 I have. The one I bought came with three sets of cans, two full fairing sets, two seating configurations, etc. So that is why the difference in the two pics.
Hope you are not too disappointed. You should say to hell with what your friends think, your new Duc is a good bike to get some riding experience.
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tank fix
Everybody suggests doing the por-15 fix and, if you're a DIY, certainly go for it but you'll be putting some time into it. See Rainman's sticky post on the top of this forum about it. Otherwise, you could do what I did: get a radiator shop to do it for you. I paid $45 to get my rusty '98 tank done and haven't looked back.
As far as the bike being all show and no go, well, it's all perspective. I have a heck of a time riding mine, grin from ear to ear, it sounds great, and to hell with burning up the straight-aways.. plus, I prefer the half-fairings. To each his own.
Everybody suggests doing the por-15 fix and, if you're a DIY, certainly go for it but you'll be putting some time into it. See Rainman's sticky post on the top of this forum about it. Otherwise, you could do what I did: get a radiator shop to do it for you. I paid $45 to get my rusty '98 tank done and haven't looked back.
As far as the bike being all show and no go, well, it's all perspective. I have a heck of a time riding mine, grin from ear to ear, it sounds great, and to hell with burning up the straight-aways.. plus, I prefer the half-fairings. To each his own.
Dunno about the all show no go comment either. It'll hit a top speed of 125-130. How much faster do you need to go? Yeah, it's got 75 horsepower, and is less powerful than today's 110-150 hp inline 600s and liters. However, it handles like a dream. And, in a capable riders hands, it can blow away literbikes in the twisties. These bikes aren't about straight line races, sure you'll lose there, but a good rider can outride literbikes on the track on a 250. I've seen it done. (not by me! I'm slow! )
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Your comments are an expansion or "drop down menu" of what I said in conclusory fashion. All completely accurate.DucatiGal said:Dunno about the all show no go comment either. It'll hit a top speed of 125-130. How much faster do you need to go? Yeah, it's got 75 horsepower, and is less powerful than today's 110-150 hp inline 600s and liters. However, it handles like a dream. And, in a capable riders hands, it can blow away liter bikes in the twisties. These bikes aren't about straight line races, sure you'll lose there, but a good rider can outride liter bikes on the track on a 250. I've seen it done. (not by me! I'm slow!
However, I think his post was referring to his peers [all 22-year-olds, according to his profile?] talking or bragging about their bikes performing 0-120 from stoplights, entry on to freeway on-ramps, and long, straight highways. In other words, his friends were talking about total horsepower and "drag racing" at stoplights.
From my experience guys in their twenties typically don't think "I don't need to go faster than 120-130." They want bragging rights with the guys while having a beer or sitting at a light. They like knowing that specs and tests have said their bikes are capable of going 170 to 180. No matter that they may never be skilled or brave enough to push a bike to 180, they simply want their friends to admire that they own a bike that can go that fast.
Based on the above, to his "posse" [sorry, could not resist using the term] the old Duc 900 is indeed all show [Ducati name] and no go.
I think it important that he gets and handles the truth. I expressed sympathy because I suspect that he bought the 900 thinking "It's a Ducati, so it must be fast."
So it's a good thing for us to set him straight so he does not shame himself in front of his fellow riders as they brag about getting their bikes up to 170 on the highway last night.
At 22, he needs to get a few more years riding the mid-power 900 and then he can move up to something like the R1 or other liter bikes [most riders in their twenties cannot shell out 21k for a 999, or even 12k for a 998].
I pity him if he runs with a crowd that all have super-fast liter bikes because such would be miserable, running last in the pack. But I think he should concentrate enjoying the 900, which for the price is a real screamer considering its torque and profile.
I dont really need to destroy my friend bikes but I would at least like to not be left in the dust. My last bike was in 89 Yamaha FZR600 so I am guessing that this at least has to be a performance upgrade from that which is all I really care about. Most of the guys I ride with have mid 90's 600's and being able to keep up would be fantastic. For the most part I have always wanted to own a Ducati and I could not pass up this deal. I live in the midwest and have seen only a handful of them in my entire life. I am glad that you filled me and I wont look like a [email protected]@ss on my first time out getting killed by bike after bike. However if If i was to be outraced I am still riding a ducati which makes me happy regardless. I was also wondering that with this bike having such low miles would it be silly for me to make this an SP look-alike or get the airtech body kit.
I was also wondering that with this bike having such low miles would it be silly for me to make this an SP look-alike or get the airtech body kit.
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Your 900 will do fine against those bikes.jcassonjr said:I dont really need to destroy my friend bikes but I would at least like to not be left in the dust. My last bike was in 89 Yamaha FZR600 so I am guessing that this at least has to be a performance upgrade from that which is all I really care about. Most of the guys I ride with have mid 90's 600's and being able to keep up would be fantastic. For the most part I have always wanted to own a Ducati and I could not pass up this deal. I live in the midwest and have seen only a handful of them in my entire life. I am glad that you filled me and I wont look like a [email protected]@ss on my first time out getting killed by bike after bike. However if If i was to be outraced I am still riding a ducati which makes me happy regardless.
Not at all silly to make your bike an SP. Check on eBay for the parts, as they come up all the time.
Here are sites that tell you about the differences between the models and otherwise talk about the 900.
http://www.ducatitech.com/2v/sp_cr_faq.html
http://www.mcreports.com/Pages/Indivbikes/Ducati/900SS-CR-SP-FE.html
http://www.pashnit.com/bikes/ducati.htm
Check out eBay here, for examples of what is available:
This is with "900 Ducati" entered in the search box:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&mppfqy=900+ducati&from=R10&satitle=900+ducati&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=94104&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=
This is with "900 SS SP" in the search box, it limits the hits, so I would not use it. But it's an example of a narrow search:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10&catref=C6&satitle=900ss+sp&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=200&fpos=94104&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=
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Hunter S. Thompson was a famous dude, you know who he is? In 1995 he wrote a review in Cycle World on the 900 SS.
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Song of the Sausage Creature
Hunter S. Thompson
There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.
Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."
"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers".
The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.
But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.
Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.
I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.
Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.
When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.
Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....
So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.
The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....
No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery.
Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.
The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.
Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not.
I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, fucked-up for the rest of its life.
We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.
No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.
On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....
And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.
I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.
When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.
It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....
But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.
Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird....
But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.
The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.
Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.
It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.
Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?
That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME".
Song of the Sausage Creature
Hunter S. Thompson
There are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.
Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."
"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers".
The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.
But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.
Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.
I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.
Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.
When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.
Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....
So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.
The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....
No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery.
Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.
The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.
Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not.
I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, fucked-up for the rest of its life.
We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.
No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.
On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....
And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.
I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.
When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.
It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....
But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.
Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird....
But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.
The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.
Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.
It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.
Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?
That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME".
Glory be to the Gonzo! If your 22, you should be reading "Fear and Loathing" and "Rum Diaries"! Cycleworld just did a nice piece about Hunter a couple of months ago after he blew his head off. That article was written for CW by the way. I have a 95 CR and love it, I ride with my buddy who has a 2004 Gixer and I always get all the attention.
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Here is a short clip of my 900 at about 65% power. Had to take it easy on the short, congested roads in San Francisco. But, as you can see, your 900 is not a slug by any measure.jcassonjr said:
But, get on my R1 and you can tell the difference.
http://www.heartinsanfrancisco.com/65%power900SSSP.wmv
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