1980 900SS rebuild...

[Vacant Possession]

Heads up...

No, really; This is an update about the heads.

The SS needs a service.

After a chat with Jan Biggelaar, it was apparent that is was about the same price to have my spare heads built up as it would be to remove my existing heads and have the exhaust threads repaired by Tony Brancato and then re-setup. Also, I could just drop the engine and swap the heads, carrying out some remedial maintenance whilst the lump was on the bench.

So that's where I am, the heads are with Jan now and here is an overview of his work so far. I am having the inlet valves changed to 42mm valves in line with the later engines, a mild gas flow and installation of the Malossi 'O' ring conversion for the manifolds.

These heads are destined for my final bevel engine which is currently 'here & there'. When the engine was in one piece, it looked like this and had my full flow oil filter conversion fitted. This consisted of a Newton Equipment adapter and a machined down oil filter tower, custom Goodridge hoses and custom billet cam bearing supports with provision for an external oil feed.

Before it was laid up, here it is in 1984; Picky taken about a 1/2 mile from the Bisquit Cognac distillery.

and these pickies in halcyon days at St Sernin De Duras, 47.120 France.

To cap it all, look what just turned up!

Thanks to Paddy for sourcing me a set of original single skinned SS exhausts. I can now quietly forget the motley set of down pipes lurking in my garage. Of especial note were the horizontal down pipes, somehow, sometime the originals were lost in the mists of time, goodness knows when.

I am hoping their careful fitment on heads with good exhaust threads will finally put my exhaust thread woes to bed forever.

Chroming done by Classics and Chrome, Hinckley, price £180 for everything (chrome) you see including VAT & postage.

With my spare heads fitted, I'll commission Brancato to re-thread the exhausts and reassemble the original heads; I think I'll leave the original heads with standard valve sizes. Then it's a quick engine drop and head change and I have a really nice set of spare heads, eventually destined for the third bevel when circumstances permit.

 

[ducatipaddy]

I hardly dare mention i have a set of 42mm bigger valve heads, expertly ported and gas flowed and with brand new exhaust thread inserts in stock.....

 

[Vacant Possession]

As you know, I was very interested, however I did have all the other parts. When I get these heads back, they will have all new rockers, bearings, seats, guides, valves and those peachy cams you sold me ;-)

Now I have options and I thank you for that.

 

[Vacant Possession]

Passed her MOT today... did absolutely nothing to it, started first kick, drove to the MOT centre and that was that. No problem. It even started first kick when I left, after being swooned over by the mechanics. Who said bikes were inanimate?

900GTS MOT tomorrow. Now that's one bad tempered bike that doesn't give a flying stuff what people think; Last year it took me a whole hour of kickstarting before the bar steward would start. I think tomorrow will be le plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. It may be oil tight, but I think it's just anal retention.

 

[ducatipaddy]

Stop messing about with AAA battery's and get your self a small nuclear reactor and it will start fine

 

[Vacant Possession]

Nah, you're allright. Whilst I appreciate a nice warm fire, that's just silly .

 

[Vacant Possession]

Heads finished, fins repaired...

I have just received the final pictures from Jan Biggelaar prior to the completed heads being sent back, I can't wait to receive them!

My spare horizontal cylinder head had the small fins on the upper side of the exhaust damaged at some point and part of the head build was repairing these fins.

I didn't send shims, valve retention clips, cam support bearings, valve closing springs or gaskets, so there were some extra charges.

So, for building both heads and including the fin repairs, the bill all inclusive was £530. This included:-

1. replacing the exhaust valve seats with lead free resistant valve seats
2. fitting the Malossi 'O' ring inlet manifold & mount conversion
3. gas flowing both heads and matching the ports to the Malossi conversion
4. fin repair
5. assembly & setting up.

Bearing in mind my car is due in for a service on Monday which will cost £750 (I know this as I have already paid FX: Ouch!) I think that is pretty good value.

Here are the fins before repair...

and after...

 

[Vacant Possession]

Preparing for the V Twin Rally...

Yup, it's that time of year again and I'd like to go this year on the SS.

As I like riding it, apart from oil changes, I haven't dealt with some of the snagging that is still left over from the rebuild. Some of the snags are really quite annoying such as fiddly changing down. I have also managed to shag my exhaust threads so I am putting on my spare heads full of NOS rockers and pristine cams on the bike and removing the originals for thread repair & re-shimming.

I had trouble having the heads delivered by Yodel as they had the wrong address. I gave them the correct address for the last attempt and they still got it wrong. Eventually I had to pick them up myself from Crawley, but too late; The bad news is they were tossing the boxes around like rubber balls with this result.

I didn't spot the damage immediately and wished I had torn the boxes open at Yodel in front of the lady and spent time carefully inspecting them.

Aside from oil leaks caused (I hope) by poor chipped chroming on the end of bevel tubes scratching the bevel tube top O rings, the bike has an annoying habit of requiring a little bit of help when changing down. Yes, it has a new return spring.

So I wanted to be able to see the ratchet/pawl mechanism operating which is a bit tricky as it is masked by the clutch - unless you have special Ducati tool part #: PWI-01 below :-

and...

The tool effectively supports the gear change shaft with the clutch cover removed.

So with this tool in hand, designed & cut out by me and welded & tidied up by P&D Customs who apart from being downright decent human beings are really quite exceptionally talented. You may not like their bikes but they know what they are doing. They welded up my spare crankcases, fixed by welding a crack in my pristine clutch arm cover and turned my handful of bits into a useful tool all for £120. I thought that wasn't too shabby.

Anyway, time to rip the old girl down...

Leaving me with an engine on the bench...

I forgot to remove the clutch whilst it was still on the bike and that 30mm slim clutch nut can be a bitch. I have six stitches under my left eye from my 30mm Facom pipe spanner slipping whilst tightening that nut about thirty years ago. So I bunged it in my engine stand...

and got my rather large son to stand on the back of the stand whilst I undid the nut. All this to reveal the ratchet/pawl mechanism in all its glory, including the adjustment screw - which is what I was after.

I was quite excited to see how clean everything is, it's all looking good in there. The honing marks are still clear after 3,600 miles...

Whilst awaiting good strong light, I put it to bed with the help of some old Sainsbury's bags.

I am hoping a minor adjustment will fix the changing down problem. It will change down sweetly, but you need to just touch the gear lever underneath with the lightest brush. This leads me to believe the pawl isn't quite catching the ratchet without help. We will see - at least I will be able to see what is going on clearly now with my trusty tool .

 

[ducatipaddy]

Only thing i would add to this Paul is check the selector drum locating spring and plunger. Quite often its that which pulls the drum round the last bit. I have stripped loads of engines and these springs and plungers do vary in both length and spring strength. Just be careful not to drop the spring or plunger inside

 

[Nix]

Just been looking through last few pages of this thread - what an amazing project! Really well done, Paul, you should be proud of yourself, the bike looks fantastic and no doubt is a credit to you!

If you ever want it to look even better, park it up next to mine, my bike's, er, patina is very well established lol!

 

[Vacant Possession]

Thanks Nix, Nothing would please me more than a blast up North and the freedom to roam on my bike for a couple of weeks wherever it takes me, it's really appealing.

I know someone else who'd enjoy that too, mentioning no names Derek.

 

[Glawster]

Hi Paul,
Yes that does sound appealing - I just bought a BMW GS1200 to do exactly that. Not sure I'd fancy it so much on a 1970s Italian! Maybe we could invite Paddy on his Jota to ride behind, pick up the shrapnel and do the ongoing repairs? Currently we're just heading from the Ardennes to the Vosges in my wife's little MX5 - not a bike, but still good fun.
Cheers,
Derek

 

[Vacant Possession]

Lovely! Have some Rillette for me .

 

[jerrycan]

I've just looked through your 900ss rebuild and would like to say what a great job you have made.

I have 2 or 3 questions which I've not been able to find the answers to in the post, first off what colour of gold have you used for the calipers? I take it that the wheels are a different gold, what is it?

With the Nova primary gear is the gearing the same as standard or does it spin the gearbox faster? Are you running std final gearing?

If you've already covered these points apologies in advance.

Max

 

[ducatipaddy]

I can answer the calliper bit
Callipers are anodised, the colour intensity etc of the gold depends how many times they are run through the process. wheels are usually powder coated. again this will depend on what shade of gold the PC has in stock, the powder comes in 25kg drums so you dont really want to have the pc buy in a special shade. If you use someone like TPCS wheels who do ducati wheels all the time they will have the correct shade in stock

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&r...hhWfaaOj_4SfW9Qkw&sig2=an5ErfPZM0XhLZED3xGzZg

 

[Vacant Possession]

I've just looked through your 900ss rebuild and would like to say what a great job you have made.

Thanks! It still isn't finished .

Snip... (thanks for answering the first bit, Paddy)

With the Nova primary gear is the gearing the same as standard or does it spin the gearbox faster? Are you running std final gearing?

I didn't use the Nova gears on this engine - I decided to keep it as standard as possible although I couldn't resist a few changes .

The Nova gears do change the gearing and I used them on my 900GTS. They sound epic! I hadn't realised what an excellent difference to the sound straight cut gears would make; I installed them for reliability reasons.

 

[Vacant Possession]

Monster service, and serendipitous outcome! Snagging nearly done...

Just to recap, my SS although very beautiful had 'quite a few' niggling faults left over from the rebuild. I listen to others and they seem to get it close to right first time; Not so me!

In fact, it has been quite depressing. Here are a few points I was trying to address:-

• Gear change which was a bit miss rather than hit when changing down
• numerous minor oil leaks
• cooked coils (my fault)
• play in swinging arm
• dying Marzocchi shocks (shafts are fine, just tired old seals)
• knackered exhaust port threads (my fault again)
• needed to replace the interim two into one exhaust system with the original downtubes & crossover (thanks Paddy) which had been away being re-chromed
• needed an oil change & new filter
• fit new 530VX heavy duty chain

I am sure there are more, but they add up to disappointment and I wanted to address them all but was aware how much work would be involved.

Continuing on from before, I have had the bike torn down to just the frame, electrics & forks/front wheel assembly which has been frustrating - I had to take the GTS to the V Twin rally and I wasn't able to join in with the fun at the Goodwood Revival which is just around the corner for me.

So miffed I have been.

The main reason for the SS missing some of the best things the year has to offer was the swinging arm was having its new bushes fitted & reamed and it simply wasn't ready in time.

I got the phone call on Friday and rushed off to pick up the swinging arm now reamed to fit my new pin from Pietro.

I re-fitted the swinging arm, rear suspension and engine on Saturday with a little help from my eldest daughter's boyfriend (thanks James) and steamed ahead. I naturally replaced all the upper gaskets with new and used new 'O' rings for oil feed & returns and used a set of bevel tubes I had re-chromed specially. I also replaced the upper & lower bevel 'O' rings in my quest to end the external lubrication system. I took the opportunity to polish both the alternator cover & clutch cover whilst they were off. I used a little modern Loctite gold silicone sealant which can be used in conjunction with gaskets (Biggelaar does this too) for the alternator & clutch cover. In addition, I recently replaced the rev counter drive seal & 'O' ring. Fingers crossed...

Because the Marzocchi's had taken up externally lubricating themselves, I had to swap to my rather tired Koni's; They too weren't in a good state as they had been attacked by the salt early this year. The bottom of one was so bad I zinc painted the bottom and covered with alloy wheel paint which will see me through until the Marzocchi's are refurbished.

The bike has now done nearly 4,000 miles...

so is thoroughly run in - except my spare heads are made up with new old stock rockers, new bearings, peachy cams (thanks again Paddy), new valves & guides so I have a little (more) running in to do. I can get my original heads sorted and serviced at my leisure.

I stayed up late last night & fitted the rear sets and two into one as the engine was still full of the old AMSOil; Removing the two into one is less fiddly than the standard set up and it has to be removed for the oil change. You can see the replacement coils & that the heads are 'quite a lot' cleaner than the blocks.

No more excuses, time to start her up (I hoped). Flood the carbs, turn on ignition and she started first kick; A good start but I was worried that all my work on the gear selector mechanism & detente might not have improved things.

I headed off gingerly, changing up gently until I left the village. All good so far, the engine is slightly fluffier low down with the 42mm inlet valves but apart from that it felt sweet. Changing down into Pulborough was an anti climax; It changed down. I was elated! The gear change is now really sweet & easy making double downshifts without fuss. I continued for my normal 10 mile warm up and was going to stop to check for oil leaks, but dang, this was fun! We don't have the highlands down here, we have a few bumps known as the South Downs. In their own way they are very beautiful and I just couldn't stop riding. I got carried away and was late home for lunch. I was only intending to ride it to warm it up so I could change the oil!

It is fantastic! I just couldn't stop. This is now the bike that I was trying to achieve when I started a couple of years ago; I am thrilled, ecstatic.

Even the oil has stopped its travels and is sulking inside the engine. The oil change revealed no metal particles at all in the gauze filter or on any of the three magnets in the engine. The magnets had a thin film of black stuff on them and that was it. I haven't checked the filter yet but I am not expecting anything. For me, that validates AMSOil as a suitable choice. For this change I have used Silkolene and I will be interested to see how it fares.

Anyway, eulogy over and a few pickies.

I was looking for excuses to go out on it and decided to look for photo ops with Goodwood cars although most will have departed. Funnily enough all the pickies involve pubs .

This is the Labouring Man at Coldwaltham, with a rather nice Porsche outside...

...and the swan at Fittleworth, with a late sixties/early 70's Opel outside...

Last but not least, The White Hart at Stopham where all the cars had left (it has no rooms) so it is just the pub & the bike.

On the way home I came up behind a Cosworth Sierra who let me blast past and then followed me until I came back into Fittleworth.

Fantastic. It has been a brobdingnagian task but the only snagging I am left with at the moment is an intermittent green 'Lights' indicator. One more thing, it has started first kick every time hot or cold. Lucky me, looks like I made it at last.

Time to get a 'value agreed' quote for my insurance methinks.

 

[ducatipaddy]

Coils work then
I was talking to Garry in Arundel Paul, he sold his 750 Sport and Blue/silver 900 and bought a Black /Gold SS. Very original, 10k with the engine seal. Needs recommissioning as been of the road for many years.

 

[DrD]

Looks stunning - that black and gold is my favourite scheme on the 900 Bevel

 

[Vacant Possession]

Coils work then

Yes indeed - very well thanks!

I was talking to Garry in Arundel Paul, he sold his 750 Sport and Blue/silver 900 and bought a Black /Gold SS. Very original, 10k with the engine seal. Needs recommissioning as been of the road for many years.

Makes sense, he could have a holiday in Barbados for a month thrown in and he'd still be quids in - and he has still got a bevel worth having.

I might get in contact, I like Gary and a blast out with two of these would be fun, two at the same time? They must be common as muck, eh?

 

[Nix]

Absolutely brilliant, what a fantastic job you've done on that SS, you should be really proud of yourself there buddy!

I'm sure you're going to have soooo much fun riding her now, these bikes are very special, nothing modern on offer today can come anywhere near their charisma and character IMHO, enjoy!!

 

[Vacant Possession]

Thanks Nix, I was worried that the only way to fix the gear change was a complete strip down so my ecstasy is mainly a based on a feeling of enormous relief. I am also chuffed my special tool enabled me to fix the problem.

The fact that it now feels so taught and alive elevates the bike to what it should be. I have a friend who has been asking to go out for a ride together and although he wasn't asking to ride the SS, I would have liked him to ride it (he's a pilot); However its niggles would have marred the experience. If we are lucky enough to get some good weather I wouldn't mind a blast and letting him have a go now, sure in the knowledge that it is as good as it can be - which is pretty fantastic.

 

[ducatipaddy]

Yes indeed - very well thanks!
Makes sense, he could have a holiday in Barbados for a month thrown in and he'd still be quids in - and he has still got a bevel worth having.

I might get in contact, I like Gary and a blast out with two of these would be fun, two at the same time? They must be common as muck, eh?

Yea his a nice guy, i must call in on him soon. He still has his 860 Special and a Darmah SS as well i think. A look at your SS would inspire him to get on with recommissioning the B&G ....but i doubt he needs inspiring

 

[Vacant Possession]

I'll drop him an email .

 

[The GOAT]

Build added to Featured Articles and by adding this posting here it will resurrected and appear in Latest Posts.

 

[Vacant Possession]

Attempt to prepare for the Red Kite Rally Hay-On-Wye, Wales 20210917

I always intended to go to the rally on my SS, and started preparations quite a while ago. You know how these things go... the project backlog grew & grew .

The SS normally runs with Campagnolo magnesium wheels which I wanted to swap out to spoked wheels fitted with new Michelin Pilot's for saftey reasons.

Apart from rebuilding the carbs, I have become sick & tired of the instruments, their cables, their proclivity to weep at the mecanical interface, their inaccuracy, etc., yada yada. There is also the increased traffic, risks & surveillance on our roads; having an accurate speedometer seems like a good plan for long journeys these days. With my distance glasses on, I can't read the speeds on my phone GPS but can see a nice big needle. So I bought a set of Smiths historic gauges a few weeks ago including a key item, the speedometer is driven from a GPS sensor. The gauges are visually a reasonably close match to the originals.

This involved building a new sub loom and interfacing with the existing loom. I will probably just build an entirely new dash loom which just connects to the original main loom.

Warning: The Smiths dials are 82mm not 80mm - I missed this!. They also have dire instructions which don't include circuit diagrams fo the various options, just text which is rather naff. In addition, the wires coming out of the dials have a miniscule CSA and IMHO would not stand the mechanical loads induced from being mounted in the old Molex connectors and shaken about in the old bedstead. I will complete this task, but I hadn't realised the extent of work required to fit these very promising instruments.

Note to Smiths: The dials are crimped together; I do remember on my old mini that some dials were crimped but not all the way round; they had tangs which engaged with slots in the housing. This enabled the glass to be removed giving access to the face & needle. Bearing in mind Smiths are targeting the historic market, there are a wide variety of different faces & needles which are used by the many manufacturers that used Smiths or lookalikes. There would be the possibility of after market or OEM dials/needles; personally I would be happy to just be able to paint the end of the needles red. Just an idea.

Because the new dials are 82mm, I was going to have to modify the dash (thank you Dremel); I didn't want to touch my original dash so I bought a new dash too.

Anyway, Everything was going swimmingly if a little tight and I found myself a few days from the rally with an SS with a new hydraulic clutch conversion which had necessitated fitting 916 switchgear to clear the master cyclinder. All good so far.

Whilst holding the tiny top hat spacer which separates the rear wheel from the caliper plate, a hornet (I am not fussed by wasps) landed on my left thigh. I backed up desperately trying to get it off my leg and in doing so tossed the spacer somewhere in the garage. Whoops. I wasn't stung, but I had an epiphany. I wasn't going to be going on the SS.

Why was I doing this when I had a perfectly good 900GTS sitting behind the SS?

The answer is I didn't - so I swapped my attention to the GTS - in one piece, running, already fitted with hydaulic clutch etc.,

The SS is now registered as a historic vehicle. I am recycling! I have not bought a new vehicle involving the dangerous mining by children of cobalt & tantalum etc. I am sitting burnishing my woke climate change credentials as a happy broccoli.

 

[Oldrat]

I’ve loved reading through your build thread, thanks for taking the trouble to document it.
Thanks to the GOAT for redirecting it and bumping it up.

 

[Vacant Possession]

Fixing my old Instrument lamps...

When I first started rebuilding the SS, I converted to LED indicator bulb holders mainly becaise I was in a rush and didn't have time to sort out the filters/lenses and didn't want the bother of bulbs.

Now it's easy to procure really bright BA7S 281 LED's and I am building another new dash with modern 'classic' instruments (another post), it's time to put the original dash back to (nearly) original.

The original lights look the same as their modern LED counterparts but are of a very different construction:

As can be seen, bulbs can be changed without removing the dash; the modern LED units require access to the underside of the dash for bulb/LED replacement, and the modern LED's are T5/286 not compatible with the original holders which are for BA7S/281 bulbs. And modern LED's do fail from time to time. So there's a plus point for the old fittings.

The real problem was the filters/lenses which were shot to bits. The red 'Gen' one was lost/decomposed years ago; the remaining lenses were bleached and/or hardened & shrunk:

Back of the dash looks like this:

So I went on the search for replacements & a punch/stamp that would cut out a biscuit of gel that would be a snug fit in the holder. I found suitable gels here.
Punch, fittings & tools are like this:

Note: Original wiring looks like below - this picture is from an untouched 1976 SS so is different from the 1980 dash.

So I replaced all the gel filters, and Hey Presto!
Note the period bird pooh.

... and LED lit up for test:

The loom needs a little tidying; because the dash sub-loom plugs into the main loom with just one twelve way AMP connector, I'll put the loom in good order and store the dash with the sub-loom attahced so I can drop the standard dash straight back in at the drop of a hat.

Next post(s): build up the new dash & sub loom.

 

[Vacant Possession]

New dash, new Smiths Classic GPS speedometer & electronic rev counter...

Warning: The Smiths dials are 82mm not 80mm! Beware!

That's the main reason why I decided to build an entirely new dash, apart from already having both original & (very expensive) LED replacements.

I wired in the LED based instrument lights around a decade ago - and one had failed. They are a right PITA to get at as access to the modern LED indicator lamps is from underneath the dash, so whilst I had the dash out I planned on upgrading the LED's.

I was unhappy with my original loom integration of the non-standard (but perfect mimic) lamps as they have thin flying leads, so I have bought screw mount spade connectors and some Tufnol sheet (about 4.5mm thick) and I will fit this to the rear of the dash to give a positive insulated spade mounting point for the indicator lamps; I should be able to use a standard loom with this method, so that's what I intend to build. Tufnol sheet or something similar can be found on eBay. I have bought some 4mm countersunk A2 stainless to flush mount the spades to the Tufnol spade sub-assembly. Pictures will follow when I have built this.

The fitment of the Smith's 'Classic' dials will involve another sub-loom, deliberately kept separate.

So the bask of the new dash - with enlarged 42mm holes for the Smith's dials - looks like this:

and with the Smiths 'Classic dials fitted:

As you can see, although the LED indicator lamps are a completely different bulb fitment system, they are an exact match aesthetically and really are 'very good'. This set up required a new LED to be fitted, here it is lit up. Note that the gel filters are opaque and not as bright as the original in my previous post:

But that's fine.
The wiring diagram for my 1980 SS is:

I have quite a few bits from old looms I have acquired over the years, so I shall be recycling an AMP connector rather than using a new one - although I do have new connectors. I also have the correct colour coded wires for this sub loom, which will look a bit like this:

Once fitted, there will be no need for the tacho drive & cable on the front cylinder, which now looks like this:

It might even get a clean .

That's enough for now, I need to build the main loom spade->LED flying lead adapter and the replacement sub loom.

 

[Vacant Possession]

Hydraulic Clutch conversion

In my opinion, Bevel Heaven's solution to the hydraulic clutch conversion looks very neat, but seems to be out of stock. Also I already had a few master cylinders floating about.

There are alternatives, like this or the way I did it on my GTS, in my GTS thread.

Key point to know is the original clutch arm is too short and won't give a straight pull, and the Brancato extension arm is too long - so I bought a Brancato extension arm and had it both shortened and the angle altered to ensure a straight pull.

I went for one of eBay's cheap slave cylinders like this:

and bought some adapters with bleed nipples, a stainless one from HEL Performance and a titanium one from eBay. I also bought some hydraulic cable from eBay and made up my own hydraulic lines.

Here is the slave cylinder & line fitted:

I bought some threaded extension rod adapters and fitted those:

The Ducati master cylinder I had lying around was not a good fit with the standard SS (Suzuki) LH switchgear, so I switched to a 996 era switchgear I also had lying around. This needed quite extensive wiring changes to make it compatible. Here is the Master cylinder fitted:

and here it is with the new switchgear, with it's own matching connector so I can refurbish the old switchgear and drop it back in whenerver needed.

I can't begin to describe what an improvement the mod makes to the clutch action.

After converting the GTS (which uses really nice components) I really wanted to mod the SS too, I have been holding back on mods as I didn't want to un-standardise the bike; now I am simply building duplicates which can be dropped in or removed when necessary.

I am not a purist but I do want to be able to return the bike to as close as possible to how it was delivered - albeit with a few miles on it .