1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

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DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:11 am

This thread is yet another repost from the Adventure Riders forum. Seems it's a better fit here so unless anyone objects I'll repost the first couple posts to bring it up to speed and then add progress reports as they happen.

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Here's my 1966 Ducati 250 Monza, the other part of a package deal with the '66 160 Monza Jr I started a thread about already. I picked them both up a few years ago and until recently have pretty much been collecting parts for this one. I'm just starting the build so it will be more "real time" than the 160 project. Judging by past experience I'm afraid this thread could go on for years...

Here's how it looked in the ad;
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This is the bike I envisioned building out of it;
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I got the tank, fenders, and toolboxes while I was building my 160. But then the plan changed for my 160 and I decided to build something more along the lines of a Mach 1 out of the 250. I had traded away my first Mach 1 gas tank so I bought another one off of eBay. The first tank was in fantastic shape. The second one, not so much. Aside from the cut off flanges up front, it looks ok, right?
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Until you flip it over anyway. Someone obviously tried fitting it to a non-Ducati frame with the aid of a hammer. Ouch.
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I put it away and tried to gather courage while I distracted myself collecting other parts. At some point I decided I wanted to upgrade the bike. Bigger engine, better forks, better front brake... while searching for a good deal on a Grimeca I ran across a deal on something a little tastier. I had picked up some flanged alloy wheels from a guy at Mid-Ohio VMD, and ordered some stainless spokes from Buchanan's to build this;
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I would have gone with Excel rims but these were a good deal and I was told they'd fit a stock Ducati hub. And maybe they do. But they don't fit an Oldani replica brake which looks (as in I get the same dimensions when I measure them) to me to be the same size as the stock Ducati part! Grrr... so much for saving money. The spoke holes are just a tad too far off to "tweak" to make work, I'll be buying Excels for it after all.

Over the past couple years I had been stealing parts off the 250 to use on a couple other projects I have. By this time last year it was a true basket case. Seeing it all torn apart made me more serious about finalizing plans for it. I sourced an engine out of a 350 Sebring, along with some 35mm Pantah forks (that I've since decided not to use). With the forks, brake, and engine worked out it was time to start mocking it up.

I looked at the tank again. After my failed attempt at saving a tank for my 160, I had to admit to myself I didn't have it in me to save this one either. What to do, what to do... Then I saw this, a 250 that fellow Bevelhead Ken Reece put together. By coincidence it even used the same front hub that I have.
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I loved it. I got in touch with Ken and he confirmed it was sporting bodywork by Evan Wilcox.

A little background - quite a few years ago I spent some time at Evan's shop and liked his work so much I seriously considered buying another bike just so I could buy some of his bodywork. It became one of those "someday I'm going to..." things. When I saw Ken's bike I decided this was going to be the day. I sent a deposit to Evan, and the plan was in motion.

I work in the auto industry. This was all happening late last year. The day after sending the deposit check out, I was told there were layoffs coming. My income was taking a hit. The toy fund I used for my bike purchases wasn't going to be looking good at all. Was this a smart thing to do?

Screw it, I had put this off for too many years and if not now, when?. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! The bashed tank (along with a lot of other stuff) got sold in an effort to get the money together before Evan got to my order and required payment. I sort of made it. The cash was there when I needed it, but my charge card had a balance on it now too. It seems a few other, non-related items got charged instead of paid for along the way. Funny how we rationalize things...

But I was lucky, I kept my job, things worked out. A couple months later I came home to find this in a box on my doorstep;
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Here's how it looked perched on the bike. Don't mind the fenders and shocks and wheels and bars and things. Basically everything other then the tank and tail will be changed before it's done.
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I also tossed it on my 160 project just to see how it looked on a black frame with silver fenders.
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Looks like I won't be using a stock fender with the new tail! I'm not a big fan of the black and silver either. I've got a couple ideas on color schemes but since I change my mind so often I won't post up any ideas quite yet.
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Next step was to mount this stuff.

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:14 am

The tank had to be in place before I could figure out where the tail went. Evan provided an aluminum channel that spanned the tunnel under the tank, I made up a bracket to attach this channel to the brace on the front of the frame. I had to be careful of a few things when figuring out where the tank should go.
1) I had to be able to get the mounting studs under the tank into the bracket. The top triple clamp can get in the way of the tank if you mount it too far forward. This probably isn't an issue if the rubber isolators aren't in place but on one early mock up I clamped the mounting bracket into position only to find I couldn't lift the tank off...

2) The bottom of the tank has to clear the cylinder head bolts. I taped some washers on there to make sure there was space between the tank and the engine, hence the green tape in a few of the photos. FWIW the 350 engine is a little taller than the 250.

3) The coil has to clear the bracket. I ended up clearancing the bracket a touch to make everything fit.

Here's a shot of the front bracket in place but before clearancing for the coil;
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And how it all fits together under the tank. The isolator isn't in it's correct position though.
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The back of the tank is supposed to be held up with a bracket (supplied) that has a mount for the tail too. I ditched that and made up a different one. It's just a channel that's been cut to match the frame and then milled out to get everything to the right height. I haven't taken any detailed pics, but here it is in it's rough form, I'll pretty it up before I weld it on to the frame.
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Here's a shot of the bottom of the tail. The front bracket is in place, the rear of the tank is supposed to rest on that. There is another bracket that is supposed to be welded to the frame and then the two rear bolts attach to that. My problem was the fender I wanted to use would block access to the front bolt, so I'd have to remove the fender to remove the tail.
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I moved things around by making a plate to move the rear bracket back even further so I could use the stock mounting points for the seat. The bracket will be bolted to the seat and also bolted to the frame instead of welded. The front part had me stumped. I came up with a lot of overcomplicated designs before I settled on a simple post bolted to the frame and yet another bracket bolted on the front of the seat. The bracket is still rough looking but it works, I'll pretty it up later. The post, rear bracket, and cut fender;
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The seat. The plate will be flush against the seat when it's done, not raised up as shown.
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The plan was to cut it into two sections to allow the tail to fit down near the frame rails. I spent an embarrassing amount of time working out various ways to mount the fender once it was cut. The rear part wasn't bad. Once I decided to go with a one piece bracket vs two separate tabs, I bent it up by hand and fit it. The front was another story. I went through a lot of ideas and at least four different pieces before finally getting something to work. At first I tried to make something that fit flat on the frame rails so there were twists and bends and minor chaos. I'd get SO close to having something, but on the last 10% I'd crash and burn. Then I cut the first "simple" bracket too short. On the final version I bent it up by hand, ground the ends to fit the tubes, then when it was close, instead of grinding them just a bit more I used a body hammer I had sitting nearby to make it fit. Worked like a champ. I welded (bronze welded, brazed, call it what you will) them in and drilled a couple holes. Then I trimmed the fender down and removed the valance panels. (Purists can relax - the fender was damaged before I got it) I still have some trimming to do, on the rear section especially, but I need to work out the taillight and license plate bracket first. Depending how that goes, I may not even use the rear section of the fender.
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Add one NOS Benelli(?) front fender from Vintage Cosmo and a tach mount from Road and Race, and now it looks like this;
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Dang, I really need to clean my basement...

And that's pretty much where I'm at with it. This thread will see updates as I get things done, but don't hold your breath. I've got the 160 to finish too and I'm HOPING that one sees some major progress over the next couple of months.

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:20 pm

Well THIS is depressing. I was going to start a thread on a dormant project I've started to work on again, only to discover I had already started one. That's not the depressing part. The depressing part is this thread is six years old(!) and the bike looks pretty much the same today as it did back then!

Not much I can do about that I guess. Here is info from posts on another forum to bring things up to speed. I've edited things here and there so if something doesn't make sense it's likely due to comments I deleted...

I started working on rearsets for it but got tangled up in constantly changing my plan on them. Every time I thought I had something, I'd come up with something "better" and start over. I finally put them on hold and started working on other things.

Since starting this I have dialed the plans back a few notches and instead of being an era-correct bike I'm now going to use modern parts in some places. For instance, Instead of buying the rest of the parts I needed to install the tach, I decided to find an electronic speedo/tach I could drop into the headlight shell. Enter Acewell. The only ones that seem to be sold in the USA right now don't lend themselves well to being stuffed into a Ducati headlight, but when I checked a British website for them I discovered two possible solutions. I couldn't find the dimensions to see if the larger choice would fit (and I'm not modding the headlight shell) so I decided to go with the smaller version. It's a little tidier anyway - they all offer a lot more features than I need/want, this one isn't so blatant about it though.

So here it is, an Acewell MD052-302. It's got a 52mm body so it will fit the 60mm hole in a Ducati headlight shell. I'll have to make a bushing to center everything up but it shouldn't be too big a deal. And now that I look at the catalog that was in the box, I see the larger version wouldn't have worked, so, nice guess on my part.
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I got some goodies with it to help the fitment. First was the chromed bezel so it looks more like a stock part. I also got two different drives for it - the typical magnet sensor like on a bicycle speedometer, and one that screws onto a stock speedo drive. But as it turns out not a stock drive from the singles. I'll have to find a new drive or make the magnet set up work.
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The stock plastic bezel was cracked. No worries, I wasn't going to use it anyway.
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Just screw it off and replace it with this shiny one… um, er... Why won't if come off? It's cracked, it should be loose, not tight. Wait a minute.. is it glued on?
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Not the best picture but I think the bezel got glued to the speedo body. I really don't want to send this back to England… I guess I'll send off an email to the seller but I'm pretty tempted to just cut the thing and try to peel it off the shell… it'd pretty much suck if that didn't work though. The bushing I'd need to make would become a lot more complicated anyway.

Looks like I own it now!
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Success… though even with two cuts in the bezel it was still a pain to break loose. Before I tried this I was twisting so hard one of my arms is sore… which may say more about me getting older than anything else, but still. Anywhos, I think it was some sort of sealer that locked it all up, not glue. Which brings up the question of how the hell they expect people to separate these things without breaking something but that's moot now.
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Ah yes, much more better.
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I think if a guy put a little time into it he could come up with a vinyl face to make it look much more vintage, at least when there was no power going to it. Maybe a little Ducati logo on there? Hmm…

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:25 pm

I started cutting a bushing out of aluminum to make the speedo fit the headlight shell, but before I finished it I gave some rough dimensions to a buddy who then printed one out on his 3D printer. The first one is out of cheap material just to see how it works, when I finalize the dimensions he'll make one out of some softer material for me so it has a little give to it.

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A little tweak to the inner diameter and a test fit. Don't mind the tach mount on the right, it goes away now since the Acewell is a tach too.
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Works like a champ. Except the headlight shell I used as a pattern doesn't match the one on the bike so the fit is a bit off… but that's nothing that can't be fixed in the final version. Good enough for mock up. Now on to working out a way to drive the speedo.

The next day I went downstairs to clean up the shop so it'd be easier to work on things. Got bored instantly. Instead I put a little more time into the aluminum insert.

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This headlight shell will likely end up being painted silver. I'll probably just polish this up and use it as.
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DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:29 pm

And more parts! I got these el cheapo mirrors off of eBay and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by them.

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And then another eBay find, I ran across a manifold I thought might work. I was dreading putting a manifold together for this thing, not technically difficult but one of those deals that would have delayed me for months. Ah, who am I kidding? Years even. It's the little things.

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When that showed up it inspired me to buy the other stuff I'd need to mount it up. Clamps, hoses, choke lever, etc.

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I know, nothing too exciting but at least I'm getting things checked off the list again. I'm really hoping there will be many progress updates to this thread in the coming months...

DBDBrian
Posts: 197
Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2015 11:29 pm

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DBDBrian » Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:12 pm

Thanks for your post Craig. All very interesting pictures and info, it's good too see what's going on in home workshops.
I like yourself have been working on a Ducati rebuild for a few yeas now, I sometimes wounder were the time goes? But in my defence I have totally rebuilt two Goldstars, and various other motor cycle related projects since my retirement. The Ducati is on the bench at the moment.
Keep pressing on, and post further updates on your restoration.

Brian
Brian
Made in England

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Thu Jan 07, 2016 6:05 am

I mentioned the reasets earlier but didn't post any of the options I had tried. Long story short I've been working on them literally for years and just going in circles spending time and money on ideas that didn't pan out. As it turns out, the answer to my multi-year gumption trap rear sets was to stop making things so f'ing complicated, get over having to use aluminum, and just bolt some steel plate on there. They aren't done yet but the basics are laid out and they will work just fine. I haven't cut the plate to shape yet since I was going to work the muffler mount into the shifter side (decided not to) and I still want to work a brake light switch into the brake side. I'm waiting for a few switches to show up for that.

I also had some muffler adapters made up to go from a 45mm muffler to the 38mm pipe. The shims included with the muffler were trash, but then I expected that.

The pics:

POS adapters below. I'd need all three. No chance of an exhaust leak there! The new one is already slid into the muffler. Still needs to be slotted welded and polished.
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Kind of sort of in position. Shift linkage will be redone, but that's the gist of it. Obviously the mount for the rearset will be cut down quite a bit…
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And the brake side. A touch simpler than the first five or ten iterations. Add a cable stop, work in a brake switch maybe, and done. That will be a very happy day for me.
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I discovered I was over complicating the speedo drive too (do I sense a theme here?) so I ordered a drive I think I can make work. It was supposed to show up today but didn't show. More news later...

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Sat Jan 09, 2016 10:12 pm

I traced around the footpeg and then pulled the plate off the bike. A little more scribbling and the basic shape was laid out.
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Cut and grind
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Linkage is still just a mock up. I screwed up putting the bends in it, and may add spacers behind the plate anyway to get the lever moved outboard a little is the muffler ends up being in the way. This is the basic idea though.
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I also made the speedo drive work. That will save me some messing around with brackets and wiring!

DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Tue Jan 19, 2016 2:07 am

More rearset lines and holes, figuring out how to work the brake light switch into it.
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I still need to put the cable anchor on the edge of it (and do a little more work on the shape). I thought about bending the edge up but decided to weld something on instead.
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Not a great photo but kinda shows the lever stop (final edition will have a button head bolt holding it on) and the brake light switch (black plastic on the back of the bracket). The switch isn't position quite right yet, but it will be activated by the lever stop.
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And the muffler with the adapter welded in.
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DesmoDog
Posts: 145
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2009 12:36 am

Re: 1966 250 Monza => 350 Bitsa

Postby DesmoDog » Mon Jan 25, 2016 4:06 am

Little things are getting done. This is the basic set up for the rear brake, yeah I know it looks just like the last post but there's a tab on there for the cable anchor now. I made a cable end to fit the gizmo on the lever, but I haven't shortened the cable yet. All that's left on the bracket is to attach something to hold the brake light switch in position (it only has one mounting bolt and can pivot right now) and do the final clean up on the edges.
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I tweaked the speedo adapter thingie so I can put it inside the headlight shell. Now all I need is an o-ring to put between the speedo and the shell.
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After spending way too much time screwing with ways to mount the speedo sensor and magnet, I sprung for a speedometer drive off a moto guzzi and tah dah! This cable has the sensor/magnet built in. I considered pulling the casing off the wires and running them up a real speedometer cable housing but decided against it.
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I bought some stainless bolts to hold the rearsets on. On the shifter side I turned down the head a bit so the shifter can move past it. I'm also taking the markings off the other three of them.
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And this morning I figured out that the inlet manifold doesn't center on the port in the head. No biggie, except it complicates my cheat to putting a tapered insert into the oversize manifold if I don't spring for porting the head right away. Looks like I'll have to at least modify the head to blend the two.
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