Looking for a clutch lever that would fit this Tomaselli set

[Daniil]

Hello guys. I just noticed that my clutch lever is not original for the Tomaselli set up I have on my bike. It sits way too low, making the cable misaligned and cause it to break eventually. Kinda hard to explain, but if you look at the photos of the brake side and clutch side you will understand what I am talking about. Can someone point where I can get a Tomaselli clutch lever? Tried Guzzino, Domiracer, and Bevelheaven with no success. Thanks. Dan

[ajleone]

Dan,
I was missing one of the integral cable adjusters and found this guy in Canada, Wolfgana Haerter:

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/laverda/it ... nframe.htm

Check under controls tab.
Tony

[Bevel bob]

Are these tommaseli controls standard on your bike? If not have you used them with the matching lever before the wrong replacement fitted?.I ask this because I tried several non standard control sets and found that they all made the clutch very heavy and brake innefective due to the wrong leverage ratio's,(the distance between pivot center and nipple center).In desperation and in order to prove the point I bought some cheap ally controls and re-drilled the pivot point closer to the nipple,Approx 15mm center to center. this did the trick and seemingly halved the effort.Many sets come with 25 mm or more --far too big. Check out the distance on a properly restored bike.

[JimF]

Not standard for the bike - and I take the blame.

This was my bike before it was Dan's. It is a 1969 Mark 3D which was the early wide case fitted with the same 31.5mm front forks and the same front brake setup as the narrow case bikes. I believe that on the orange/yellow late production wide case bikes Ducati beefed up the front brakes (maybe) and the forks (certainly.) I wanted to beef up the brakes and bought the 4LS Grimeca hub. That hub doesn't fit in between the 31.5mm forks, so I got a set of 35mm Paoli forks which is the size (not brand) of fork Ducati ended the wide case production with if I am not mistaken.

I upgraded the head bearings and bought the vintage Tommaseli clip-ons to complete the front end. So at this point, the brakes, forks and steering head bearings all seemed to combine as a decent package upgrade to the front end of this early wide case bike.

The brake side control lever was easily adaptable to the dual pull needed for the 4LS brakes, but I don't recall much about the clutch side, except that maybe there was a lot of bending stress on the cable as it exited the ferrule at the clutch lever.

So to make a long story short, looking at a stock or restored-to-stock '69 Mark3D won't help much.

[Bevel bob]

I would think that the tls brake would work well enough with any lever as its a light bike, the real issue is the clutch which was horribly heavy on my bike when fitted with non std levers, changing the ratio back to that of an orriginal set up made the clutch feather light but interestingly the reduced travel made the clutch drag untill i removed the warped plates!!.All is now spot on, just need to weld-fill the old pivot holes.

[JimF]

Hi Bob,

I don't recall - is the stock hub on a narrowcase a TLS or a SLS? I think you are correct that they are TLS, but regardless I have a vivid memory of a stop light ahead of me changing from green to yellow to red in a hurry, cross-traffic on that upcoming street was posted at 50mph (so really the traffic going through the intersection was moving faster than that) and me on my narrowcase with the rear tire locked up and the damn close to a lock up on the front as I tried to bring the narrowcase to a stop somewhere short of inside the intersection.

The widecase frame and engine adds some weight and mass and I think the same front brake hub that is marginal at best on a narrowcase is not something to be trusted on the heavier and more powerful widecase models. I think that the later widecases had a larger brake hub, and didn't some get a disc brake? I take that to mean that Ducati recognized the need for improvement.

Anyway, it's just my opinion that while the earliest of widecases gained engine robustness their Achilles heel was that they drew their front end components directly from their predecessors.

[Daniil]

Thanks, Tony, Bob and James. Yes, the consensus is the wrong lever. It does make the bike's clutch kinda heavy due to an additional sharp bend of the cable at the lever's hole. I can resort to re-drilling a lever, but would like to find anything close to the proper one for this Tomaselli perch even for the sake of the proper look. Whoever sold/ used those Tomasellis must have some replacement levers, used or NOS. Any pointers? BTW the brake side is correct for teh perch, making the brake operate well and without use of heavy force. Dan