Postby Desmoto-M.3 » Wed Dec 09, 2009 4:43 am
Happy greeetings to all here!
I have been around these kind of old Ducatis for almost all my life. But i never had owned one of my own until my Father passed on, 2 years ago.
I have only one Ducati now, plus a few broken spare parts.
My father once had 5 different mid 1960s models , a 1965 Monza, a 1966 Scrambler, a 1967 w.c 250 SCR , a 1968 350 Desmo, and a 1966 250 Mark 3 .
Except for the Monza and the Desmo, he was the original owner of all them.
He began selling them off starting in the late 1990s until he only had one left, his favorite.
Now I have it and it's very special to me!
It's the 250Mark3 and it has the head from the Desmo on it and a 350 SCR piston installed too. The original head from it was sold on the 350 -- anybody know of anyone who has a Desmo style model with a springer head in the E.Chicago, Indiana area?
My Dad and a friend of his did the head swap work to it around mid 1970s when i was just a kid. I remember that my Dad was pretty upset for a long time that switching the heads was too much more harder to do than they thought before they started the job.
Afterwords, my Dad always said he was sorry about doing the head swap because he said it wasn't as fun to ride afterwords. But he also claimed that the 350 got more fun to ride, after the head swap. So he did not want to do all the work to put the heads back, like before.
Isn't the DESMO head supposed to be better, just like my Dad was told by all others?
I'm a little afraid to rev the engine all the way out , but it will really rev way up there!
With the DESMO head, it has to be at least as fast as a stock 250 Mark 3, right?
The problems i have with it are
the big original tank has small leaks around the bottom near the fuel spouts, so i got a chromed tank from a 350 SCR on it, until i get the leaks fixed ,
it hurts back against my foot sometimes when i try to start it ,
it won't idle by itself for more than a few seconds at a time ,
the speedometer is too hard to read because the needle bounces all around at most rpms ,
and i don't like to ride it after dark because the headlight is so weak below 5000rpm .
If anyone else has faced and fixed any of these same problems, please post what you did for yours.
Thank You in advance!
Ken
PS - I am very glad that this site is here for me to see all you others with old Ducatis too!
