Ducati 900ss Light Resto/Fix Up
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:51 pm
I’m a bit if a sucker for the air cooled 900ss & one popped up on Ebay last year with some tasty extras including an Ohlins shock, Micron exhausts & Kehin FCR 39 flatside carbs.
I asked the owner if the frame was showing any signs of cracking near the headstock, which is a common fault with these bikes. Sure enough he found a hairline crack in the frame & duly removed the bike from sale. After a few exchanges of messages a heavily reduced price was agreed & the bike was mine.
This is part one of this project; fixing it up & riding it for a while. Later in the year Part two will be seeing how light I can make it.
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The bike was located a few hundred miles from where I live so I arranged for a courier to get it for me, meaning the first time I saw it was when the he unloaded it from his van. It looked ok & the previous owner included boxes containing the original parts & also a folder with a large number of receipts & service records for the bike.
Happy New Bike Day!
It sat in my garage until a couple of weeks ago when I got my ducks nearly in a row & I started playing with it. As I have the attention span of a goldfish I managed to persuade a mate who has done a couple of restos to give me moral support with the project & also twirl some spanners.
Stage one was the strip down to see what we were playing with. These bikes are remarkably simple things to take to pieces & despite Ducati’s nodding acquaintance with quality control in this era, there was no real drama apart from one bolt holding on the side stand bracket, which wouldn’t come undone. It resisted the long bar & the hot spanner but finally succumbed to the Makkita 18v drill & a succession of metal drill bits.
This photo was taken before the strip down & you can see the hairline crack left of the headstock, caused by Ducati thoughtfully building in a weakness in the original design. This needs to welded & the top section of the frame braced to ensure it doesn’t happen again. You can buy a bolt-on brace & I do actually have one of these (thanks G.P!), but I decided to have a piece welded in place as a more permanent solution.
[img]]
Close up
[img]]
Coming next, the strip down
I asked the owner if the frame was showing any signs of cracking near the headstock, which is a common fault with these bikes. Sure enough he found a hairline crack in the frame & duly removed the bike from sale. After a few exchanges of messages a heavily reduced price was agreed & the bike was mine.
This is part one of this project; fixing it up & riding it for a while. Later in the year Part two will be seeing how light I can make it.
[img]]
The bike was located a few hundred miles from where I live so I arranged for a courier to get it for me, meaning the first time I saw it was when the he unloaded it from his van. It looked ok & the previous owner included boxes containing the original parts & also a folder with a large number of receipts & service records for the bike.
Happy New Bike Day!
It sat in my garage until a couple of weeks ago when I got my ducks nearly in a row & I started playing with it. As I have the attention span of a goldfish I managed to persuade a mate who has done a couple of restos to give me moral support with the project & also twirl some spanners.
Stage one was the strip down to see what we were playing with. These bikes are remarkably simple things to take to pieces & despite Ducati’s nodding acquaintance with quality control in this era, there was no real drama apart from one bolt holding on the side stand bracket, which wouldn’t come undone. It resisted the long bar & the hot spanner but finally succumbed to the Makkita 18v drill & a succession of metal drill bits.
This photo was taken before the strip down & you can see the hairline crack left of the headstock, caused by Ducati thoughtfully building in a weakness in the original design. This needs to welded & the top section of the frame braced to ensure it doesn’t happen again. You can buy a bolt-on brace & I do actually have one of these (thanks G.P!), but I decided to have a piece welded in place as a more permanent solution.
[img]]
Close up
[img]]
Coming next, the strip down
