Monster Mod #1: Boomshackalacka… Here Come The BoomTubes

Some Custom BoomTubes by Mark Savory @ MotoCreations

Over the past couple of weeks a barrage of parts have made their way into the garage and while on one level it’s somewhat insane to already be planning the destruction of a perfectly good motorcycle only so you can recreate it in your own vision, I’m also fairly certain that somewhere in the basic genetic structure of a Monster lies a series of base pairs that if analyzed would blueprint the need for modification. It seems like something that is intrinsically part of the bike’s soul. Something it doesn’t need, but rather asks for… Rather loudly…

Hunting these parts down has been both an absolute joy and an odyssey in and of itself to say the least. It is amazing how one small picture in a tiny quadrant of the internet can launch your mind in fifteen different directions all at once and lead to several hours of web surfing all in the name of a part that nobody seems to stock stateside. Page after page you struggle to find what you’re looking for. Hours of links later, you’re saying to yourself perhaps it’s not meant to be… But then, just for the shits and giggles of it, you click on that one last link… That one last remaining hope before you truly pack it in and give up… Of course at this point, you’re fully expecting to be let down once again… Only this time, you’re not… Instead you finally see it and this odd sense of web-surfing accomplishment takes hold, as you slightly smirk to yourself and think, ‘Ah ha, I finally found it!’.

Needless to say there’s a certain satisfaction in the picking and choosing of what you want to go on your bike. I know this might sound crazy, but it feels soooooo radically different than the knee-dragging need-for-speed aesthetic of a full-blown sportbike, where the parts you lust after are purely performance based. There’s something quite addictive about starring at a web-page and asking yourself whether or not this bit or that fits with your vision of your own bike and there’s something quite refreshing about equally caring about the looks and the functionality.

One might suggest that you could do the same with a full-blown sportbike but I think that’s a bit of a false assumption in many ways — At some point we all lose focus on the visuals and instead turn our attention to the ends that justify the means. After all, on the most basic level, all sportbike riders subscribe to one simple truth, we run our bikes at cathedrals of speed and we always want to go faster. We want to raise our skills and perfect the craft of performance riding. Amazingly it doesn’t really matter what level you ride at either, the desire for adding bits to increase personal speed exists in exactly the same manor in everyone from the first time track rider to the WERA or CSS vet, I simply think they show it in different ways and on different levels. Ultimately irregardless of whether you time your laps or just count them, in the end everyone wants the illusion that the bits they’re putting on their bikes are making them go faster.

With the Monster it feels different. There’s no pressure to go fast. No need to press the ‘metal’ so to speak. No desire to be the quickest up the mountain. I’ve got other rides built for that purpose. Instead, with the Monster, I feel this strange yet wicked sense of visual adventure. A desire to craft and create a unique personality for the bike and one that echoes both the machine’s soul and mine. Don’t get me wrong, I want the bike to be peppy and go well, but I also want it to be something that’s been created, if not by me, certainly because of me. Something that speaks to my ideals. My desires. My dreams.

Of course every custom project needs a beginning and even though the idea of picking up a Monster has been festering inside for quite awhile, the inspirational launching pad for exactly what kind of Monster it’s going to turn out to be was missing…

But not anymore…

Over the years while shooting different motor-oil based documentaries I’ve had the good fortune to meet quite a few auto industry designers and regardless of whether they’re penning supercars, daily drivers or motorcycles, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re all remarkably similar in one respect — If you ask them where their inspiration for one of their designs originally came from it’s rarely a big object but rather something very small and particular. A pen, a watch, a toaster, a woman, the eyes of an animal. As a group, almost to a T, they all seem to gravitate towards a specific bit or two of an object that most of us would find quite ordinary and yet they see something magical in it and take that hint of a tread of a thought and build an their vision from it. At first this sort of mindset struck me as a bit odd, but I guess as happens in life sometimes, the more you hang around something you don’t quite understand, the more you begin to get it. And so with the Monster I’ve found myself searching for that one bit that can become the genesis of a well thought out idea. That one particular element that leads to unified vision.

And I found it… In a set of MotoCreations’ BoomTubes…

The second I laid eyes on a set of the Boomtubes I knew I had found my Monster’s inspiration.

The S2R just had to have them. It was that simple. While Termi’s excite me like everyone else, here, with the BoomTubes, was something unusual, super trick and yet also nicely understated. If James Dean rode a Monster, this would be the exhaust system he’d put on. In addition ordering up a set of BoomTubes offered an awesome solution to the most glaring eye-sore on the entire bike, the garish 1 into 2 catalytic converter abomination. (Every time I look at it I shutter. It’s the least Italian looking part of an entirely Italian bike).

Avid Monster fans of course will already know the name MotoCreations – For the past six years Mark Savory and his crew have been knocking out one of a kind custom Ducati bikes, their work has been featured in a number of moto-mags and if you’ve been a Ducati Monster Challenge event, there’ a good chance you’ve even seen their work in person. They’ve especially garnered quite a bit of recognition for their DesmoDevil custom Ducati-Chopper. It’s a love it or hate it kind of bike, but one that is extremely unique no matter how you cut it. (You can read the full backstory on the DesmoDevil here).

The success of the DesmoDevil, along with the rest of their custom business, has lead to Mark and his crew at MotoCreations going into the custom parts business. I say custom and not production because while they are selling their wares to Monster owners around the world, these are unique bits that you’re not going to find on your local Ducati dealership’s website any time soon (At least I don’t think so) and they’re built to order, so if for instance you want a particular tweak done here or there based on your personal taste, for a few extra bucks they’re willing to craft it anyway you want.

In the case of my set of BoomTubes, I was a bit worried about how loud they’d be — I’m all for nice sounding bikes, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve also got a neighborhood full of folks who don’t take kindly to Sunday morning moto-madness wake up calls. A few emails later, Mark worked up a nice set of custom baffles and we were on our way. Problem solved.

Now I’ve just got to find some time to get’em on the bike