Returning to Rearsets

Sato Rear Sets for The 999

While the jet lag that goes along with international travel is never any fun, I’ve got to say that coming home to find shiny new motorcycle parts eagerly waiting to be unboxed is one of the great joys of the moto-world!

Certainly makes waking up from a full nights sleep at 3 AM seem much more palatable

And so the 999 Rebuild begin – With a brand new set of Sato Racing Rearsets…

How and why I ended up going with the Sato rearsets is a bit of an elongated story — The short version goes like this — Over the holidays MotorMilt surprised me with a set of rearsets for the 1098 as a Christmas present, but I hadn’t had time to install them and then the next thing I knew the 999 went down. This clearly shifted the priorities in the garage but thankfully the folks from Motostrano in Redwood City, CA were super cool about it and agreed to let me exchange the first set for the Sato ones.

Thus the second choice of the 999 rebuild has been dealt with — What to do about the torn up stock pegs and brake lever… In my mind nifty rear sets seemed like the logical decision for two reasons, a) the OEM prices seem totally out of whack with reality and b) more importantly why not?

I mean who has ever looked at the original stock Ducati footpeg assembly and thought, ‘Gee now that’s a great looking part?‘… I’d venture to guess absolutely no one… Clearly it’s an area where Ducati saves some coin and frankly it shows. Of course would I have considered or thought to replace them if the crash had not taken place?

Probably not…

But since it did, it only seemed to make sense to put a better looking, perhaps better performing piece on the rebuilt bike.

Replacing the stock pegs and levers of course raised another question — minor sidebar: but it seems like every part of the rebuild process raises more questions than it answers but I digress — Do you stick with the stock shifting pattern or switch to a ‘race pattern’?

After a bit of thought and a few conversations with MotorMilt, I’ve decided that at least for the moment I’m going to stick with a standard street shift pattern on the rebuilt 999 — To be perfectly honest I’m not sure I’m quite ready to deal with retraining my brain to deal with reversing a decade of riding and the subsequent rewiring of my subconscious mind. Life right now seems to have enough to chew on without having to come into Turn 2 at Buttonwillow and wonder which way I’m supposed to click the shift lever. Perhaps that will change later on, but for right now it seems prudent to leave well enough alone… Needless to say I look forward to hoisting an adult beverage of choice in the garage, standing back and admiring the craftsmanship of the Sato rearsets once machine is reborn Right now that – just that – sure sounds like fun…