Monster Mod #3: BoomTube it Baby… And Chop that Tail too!
Bada...Boom... The BoomTubes get Installed
Amazing how the desire to wrench myself versus the desire to get things done quickly took an unexpected turn yesterday… After waking up WAY to early — like 3 AM early — So early the dog looked at me in fact, shook his head as if to say ‘really?’ and then went back to sleep — I ended up rolling into LA with plenty of time to spare. As in all day - and the old man, MotorMilt, came up with a brilliant idea.
With less than twenty-four hours before the next great personal moto-adventure begins, he suggested that I swing by Alex White’s Motorcycle Performance Services on La Brea and see if I could get a quick oil change and once over the Monster. Since I was planning on doing that after the great ‘09 moto-adventure wrapped up, I figured why not.
And since a box of parts was already in the back of the truck, because in my perfect world fantasy, I’d install the new bits with the old man post-trip, I couldn’t help myself. Alex had a hole in his shop schedule and the bike was there and ready… So the latest, next step, in the Monster mod project got a bit of a jump start…
Pulling the box of assorted bits out of the truck, I watched as Alex’s face lit up — Apparently I’m not the only one inflicted with the moto-lust disease… He smirked and smiled and then dived right in… “What’dda we got here?” he asked… Well, let’s see…
Moments later, Alex and his crew went to town… Bits and pieces started flying around… And at 5:10 in the afternoon the results of their labor rolled into the driveway…
Because it was a one-day affair a few things got a touch rushed and in some respects this is just a first generation version of these elements — after speaking with Alex afterward, I think it’s clear we’ve got a bit more work collectively ahead of us. For starters the Tail Chop isn’t quite perfect yet - it’s installed, safe and legal, but it’s not quite as eye-catching as either of us would like. Purely a function of time. Post trip that’ll be at the top of the list to sort out. No doubt a black powered coat is in store for the mount. Also the remnants of the homologation fender are probably on their way out — at the moment I’m thinking some sort of custom mount for the taillight is in order. I’m just not real keen on the dreaded ‘black tray’… though I suppose it’d make a fine place to place a beer 
Also the Power Commander settings for the BoomTubes aren’t quite perfect yet - I’ll be playing with them on the upcoming adventure and surely there will be a bit more tweaking post-trip as well…
In addition, as you’ll notice from the picts that Alex sourced up some nifty expandable soft FirstGear saddlebags — this will be my first trip of any kind with something other than a factory installed hard mounted set of saddlebags. I have some doubts about them, but of course plenty of folks tour this way, so I suppose it’s bound to work. Just not quite what I’m used to using… As with so many other parts of life, ultimately I guess we’ll see… There’s nothing quite like giving something a go on a long voyage…
All in all, I couldn’t be more pleased at the moment. Great adventure coming down the pike, awesome bike that’s getting progressively more awesome each day and a slowly evolving road map for where it’s headed…
This should be quite an adventure — the riding and the rebuilding 
Another shot of the new BoomTube exhaust
Tail Chop-Suey
Tail Chop-Suey 2
The new Rear Sprocket & Chain
The new Rear Sprocket & Chain Pict 2
Monster Mod #2: Bitubo Steering Damper
Bitubo Steering Dampner
It’s early in the morning and the dog is barking… Loudly… Peering through the door’s eye piece I catch a glimpse of a box and smile. Cracking the door open, I desperately try to hold the mutt back, but it’s tough. He’s excited and so am I… Standing in the doorway is a cacophony of brown. “Got another delivery for ya,” the local UPS guy says with all to knowing smirk. I get the feeling he too is in love with the Monster… Because as each box shows up, he gets to take five and talk bikes… And really is there anything better?
And so it begins…
The second mod to the Monster — well, actually it’s the first uninstalled mod to be fair — was a simple one.
If you’ve read my review of the Ducati S2R 1000 Monster for Pro Italia, you’ll know that while I totally dug the bike and what it represented, and thus obviously ended up picking one up for myself, I was not so keen on the less than solid windscreen.
Removing it was both an aesthetical choice as well as a practical one. While riding the bike, the cafe-styled half-fairing just didn’t feel very structurally sound. Above 70 mph it felt like it was a disaster waiting to happen - at least in my book. But more importantly, in my mind there’s something extraordinarily classic about the unfaired Monster lines that Miguel Galluzzi penned in ‘93. The virtue of the bike in many ways is its simplicity and the half-fairing somehow broke that for me. So with that in mind, the windscreen is now gone. Out of here. Adios. Two bolts and see ya later… I believe its destiny is to become a beautiful exercise in eBay commerce…
Yet even though that was the ‘first’ change that took place on the bike, it wasn’t really the first ‘mod’…
That honor falls to a brand new Bitubo Steering Damper. Since picking up the ‘08 S2R, I’ve had a chance to take it on two relatively short rides (>100 miles) — neither one posted to the blog since I had yet to have the time to write anything meaningfully intelligent about actually taking delivery of the bike in the first place — and on both occasions the front end felt quite different then I remembered it feeling during the week I had a similar machine for the Pro Italia review. I’d go into corners and where I expected security and that famed Ducati superbike ethos, I’d find undulation and fear. Where I’d wick it up a bit, the bike would hesitate with marked indifference before shaking it’s head slightly and barking. Much like the dog. The front never quite feeling as confident as some of the other rides in the garage. Each time I’d ask myself, the eternal riding question, “Is it me or is it the bike?”… I’m still not 100% sure, but thanks to the last trackday my confidence is much higher than it was and my gut kept telling me it wasn’t my riding but rather something missing on the machine.
Since every other ride in the garage, with the exception of the ST3, has a steering damper (and frankly I’ve always thought that was the one glaring omission on that bike from the factory), I thought adding one to the Monster would be an obvious place to start. If afterward the bike still echos uncertainty, then I’ll go to step two and look into a proper suspension set up at a place such as Race Tech (A company who has set-up both Milt’s F4 and my 999 at the track and it was without a doubt some of the best money we’ve spent — I honestly can’t say enough good things about those folks).
So once I decided it was time to investigate adding a steering damper to the bike, the next logical question was which one?
As with all things Monster, the choices are seemingly endless. My initial thought was to look into adding an Ohlins unit, since that’s an obvious suspension choice for a Ducati and something I’m at least a bit versed in thanks to the 1098S, but everywhere I turned the Ohlins solution resulted in a steering damper that ended up needing to be mounted to one side of the side of the frame and a rather unappealing fork clamp (at least to me), so relatively quickly that idea ran its course and I started searching for alternative options.
That search eventually lead to two distinct possibilities — An Arrow kit and a Bitubo Kit — Originally I was leaning towards the Arrow system since the last time I was at the MV Agusta Factory in Varese, Italy, they had piles of Arrow boxes sitting around and if Arrow is good enough for MV, it’s certainly good enough for me … but then of course fate intervened.
While surfing the new Ducati Monster Forum, I stumbled on to a thread called Black Gold Struck in SoCal, without really thinking about it I clicked the link and suddenly my head began spinning… Another local SoCal rider had done a number on his Monster and the result was absolutely spectacular… A look that I never would have thought would be my thing, suddenly seemed like the only route to go…
Suddenly everything began to crystallize - the BoomTube exhausts, the purpose of the bike, the colors, the vision and suddenly an either/or steering damper choice got remarkably simple. Even though both systems looked equally great, the The Bitubo system was the only one that came in Gold.
Of course, like many things in my life, I spent way to much time pondering the addition before moving to action. Call it financial hesitancy — even when the outcome is never really in doubt… With the next great road-trip adventure just around the corner (quite literally, posts to come), I realized that I was now battling both the clock and the inventory window of the usual suspect shops. So with that in mind, I decided to reach outside the norm.
Having read great things about a Ducati parts supplier called Desmoworks in Indiana (the former LoudBike parts shop), I gave them a shout since they listed the Bitubo unit in question on their website. (If you’ve got some time to burn, check out their blog… it’s beautiful eye-candy… just put your wallet away before hand )… Practically minutes later the chap who runs it, Anthony Creek, gave me a ring back and I laid out exactly what was going on, what I was interested in and what the time constraints were. Anthony didn’t blink. Actually he was pretty awesome about it all, and even though he didn’t have the unit in gold in stock, he got right on the horn and a few minutes later was able to unequivocally tell me that he would be able to drop ship the unit directly from his distributor and guaranteed that it’d be in LA by the next afternoon, which would give me plenty of time to install it before the coming adventure. So really, how can you say no to customer service like that? And sure enough less than 24 hours later my favorite UPS guy was standing at my door with another box in hand.
What was inside is just magical…
The Bitubo unit is brilliantly machined, it looks awesome, but of course the directions for installation are, well, typically Italian. There’s lot of words and numbers, but um.. well some interesting translation. Of course having never installed a steering damper myself before, part of me was certainly more than a bit nervous. Not so much about the bolting on as the idea that I was about to unscrew and re-screw two of the bolts that directly attach the handlebars to the triple clamps and somewhere in the back of my mind the image of riding down the road as the bars came off in my hands flashed before my eyes. But, one of the great things about installing something yourself is that as you do it images like that are lessened by the fact that you begin to gain an understanding of what you’re fixing/adding/altering and in the case of the damper it didn’t take long to realize that this was really no big deal. If you can screw in a lightbulb, you can put one of these suckers on your bike. It’s really that simple.
The biggest issue I encountered during the entire install was that the unit shipped with the riser attached to the wrong side of the bracket that comes off the handlebars, so the first time I put it on the bike the steering damper and the bracket didn’t line up correctly. But after a quick smoke break, I took a step back, double checked that everything in the package had S2R written somewhere on it and gave it a quick think. There didn’t seem to be anything to lose by trying to flip-flop the riser and once I did everything worked perfectly. All in all it was like a hour of total wrenching time, including the upside down riser fiasco. For the first mod, I’d say that’s not to shabby
And I could be happier, it’s a sweet looking unit and thus far seems to work rather well. Of course the proof will be in the pudding, as they say, and that’s about to come…
Before Picts…
Brilliant machining
The difference between the stock bolts holding bar clamps to the triple clamps and the new Bitubo bolts…
After pict #1
After pict #2
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
Let’s Get Naked: A Ducati S2R 1000 Finds A Home
A Ducati S2R1000 Monster at Pro Italia
“Oh boy… Here we go again,” is in fact the first thought that comes to mind the minute I walk into Pro Italia and realize that, yes, I am in fact once again kicking tires…
Not idly mulling about mind you, but striding purposefully through the dealership with intent-to-kill and purchase kind of eyes… The kind of tire kicking that gets you trouble on the 1st, 15th or 30th of each month…
Should I be? Would I be? Can I be? Could I be? These days it’s just damn hard for me to answer those sorts of questions…
It seems that somewhere along the line my personal passion, career and lifestyle all organically merged into me and the result is this odd combination of confusion, excitement and down right blatant moto-lust…
Rolling through the showroom, I’m struck by the fact that it’s probably time to simply accept and acknowledge the fact that when it comes to things with combustion powered engines and two-wheels my normally logically sound life comes crashing down and grinds to a halt. In effect blows up, only to be rebuilt again with either two-valves or four.
What I think I know and what I know I should do, quickly become superseded by an irrational desire to do the foolish. And while I could probably create an elaborate fictional reality as a cover story and attempt to explain why the irrational is actually rational and therefore life always makes sense, well that’d just be a blatant lie that perpetuates some other version of me. What is probably best described as a holdover of my former self. Not that those stories didn’t roll through my head mind you, but rather because when all is said and done, it’s just easier to tell the truth, and more important be honest with yourself…
Simply put, I’ve come to the not so shocking conclusion that I am in fact a full fledged addict… Some folks pick pills or drugs or drinking as their poisons of choice… For me it’s motorcycles… Plain and simple… They are not just vehicles or modes of transportation, but rather magical creatures with destinies that are anything but predetermined… In my mind they are the ultimate unknowns. They take you places you simply can’t imagine until you’re actually there. They live, they breath, they act up, I believe that they are in fact alive. And they do it with passion. With pride. With purpose.
Rationally — oh, great there’s that word again — I suppose one could make the argument that motorcycles are a healthier lifestyle choice than any of the above mentioned addictions. But frankly I’m so sure about that anymore… I spend an exorbitant of time each day thinking about nothing but riding… Even when I can’t actually get out and do the ‘riding’… From the bits to the bolts to bikes to ride itself, it’s absolutely frightening the amount of time one can spend when they’re in love with an inanimate object. From the sport, to the skill-set, to the lifestyle and growing dream to see and ride everything that’s out there, I’m tired of fighting reality… My reality…
I used to fear it, to run from it, to nonchalantly put it down amongst friends to diffuse the accepted mainstream doctrine that bikes are bad, or evil, or deadly, or who knows what else, particularly with those who didn’t share the passion — with those who didn’t see it or understand it — But no more I say… It times to face up to what it is that makes me alive…
Maybe it’s a function of getting close to turning thirty-two this summer, I don’t know, but I feel a certain sense of urgency at work here… As if time is running through me like an hour-glass. I feel as if I’ve waited my entire life to get to this point, to enjoy the life I always wanted. I’ve spent countless hours counting down the days until I could make the ‘choices’ and bear the burdens of life and enjoy the benefits. And now it’s here. I can feel it. I can see it. I believe it. It’s almost as if I can touch it.
Yet I also feel this sense that there’s only so much of me left and it feels like I’ve got to stop fooling around here. It’s time to get serious, not about my career or my loved ones, or my Cable TV package, but rather it’s time to get serious about me. It’s time to stop wasting mental and emotional energy on the things in life that I don’t really care about.
Is that selfish? Is that conceded?
Probably.
But as they say, ‘you only live once’ and of all the things in life I fear the most, the idea of letting one of the best periods of life pass by as a passenger and not an active participant scares the living hell out of me. I’d rather end up broke and destitute but with a saddlebag full of experiences then rich, wealthy and devoid of meaning. Is that youthful ignorance coming to light? Could be. Maybe at forty with a kid in toe I’ll feel differently about it… But right now it not only seems age-appropriate but time-appropriate… It feels like what I should be doing not what I’m supposed to be doing.
So why a Monster? And an outdated one at that?
Well, several reasons really… For starters I’ve had this weird growing fascination with late 60’s and early 70’s vintage bikes lately. BSA’s, Triumph’s, Norton’s, CB750’s, Mach III’s… Probably a direct result of hanging around them during the Twist shoot… There’s something about how when they’re built-out they showcase a certain kind of purpose, and dare I say urgency…
So why not pick one of those up instead? Good question. Simple answer, while I think they look cool, I’ve got no desire to engage in drum brakes, early disc brakes, headshake or a myriad of other ‘early’ technological advances that seem utterly dated by today’s standards.
The Monster — and by Monster, I mean the original Monster penned by Miguel Galluzzi, not the current Streetfighter/Thing that’s badged Monster/Homologated “Am I Brutale clone or Street Triple knockoff or contemporary slice of moto-evolutionary pie” machine — is in its own way as classic of a machine as say a CB750, but relatively speaking modern, safe, sporty and well, sound… It evokes all the bits of the past that I find cool but in something I actually want and will ride.
Secondly, I love the fact that it’s a completely open canvas. The 999 streetbike turned trackbike experience has certainly opened my eyes to customization, in a way that it wasn’t before. The Monster is the perfect platform for that sort of transformation. People have been doing it for years and I’m greatly looking forward to trying a slice of that moto-pie. The possibilities are practically endless and parts are widely available from a variety of resources. Just hunting all the sources down is almost half the fun…
Third, the idea of picking up a true 2-valved air-cooled Ducati fascinates me because it’s a relatively simple engine that’s been around practically forever. In a perfect world it’s an ideal platform to wrench on myself - a skill I have yet to conquer completely but one I certainly want to experience. Ultimately will I? Have no idea. Time right now is a fluid, combustible medium that seems to move faster then I’d like it to, but just the idea that on an engine like this it’d be possible to give it a go intrigues me greatly. There’s something marvelous about its simplicity in my mind.
Finally, it’s a sporty ride just the way it comes from the factory - It’s not Superbike competent, but it’s street-bike competent, and post-crash I have a new found respect and, dare I say, point of view on what I’m looking for when I’m not out on the track. Something that moves well but doesn’t bring out the speed freak demons inside. Right now the idea of a mellower, more comfortable, sport machine sounds damn good… And so it begins… My own kind of Monster Madness…
2009 Ducati Model Rumors - Fact or Fiction?
Once again the new model rumor mill is heating up as we get closer to the annual Ducati USA dealer meeting and the Milan Motorcycle show in November, where historically the company introduces their new bikes to the public.
Just a few days ago Ducati itself toss fuel on the fire by announcing that both the Multistrada and Hypermotard will be available in pearl white. I guess that means we won’t be seeing a retooled Strada this year after all…
Of course the big news before and after that minor announcement has undoubtedly been the reported cell phone camera shots of the new Ducati Monster 1100 taken by an Italian Ducati Riding Club member. In short order they appeared all over the net, including a featured spot on AutoBlog - Clearly when it comes to the Monster everyone wants to know what’s coming next…
The grainy cell phone images seem to foreshadow the next new Monster - The same look as last years 696 but with more power in the form of the 1100 DS engine found in the Hypermotard. If this in fact turns out to be the big news at the Milan show you certainly can’t fault Ducati, after all it’s the next logical evolution of the new Monster design. Yet am I the only wondering when we’ll see a 1098 derived Monster? Isn’t that really the naked bike we’re waiting for???
