Since it seems the group builds may be taking a hiatus I thought I would try my first bike build. Having seen Richard’s Yamaha GP bike and also the wagon build with those great wooden wheels I started on the Ducati this weekend, with the wheels of course.
This is what I am aiming for, a Ducati 750 Super Sport, an all time classic sports bike. Ducati only made around 400 and they sell for about $130,000 these days.
The rims are white metal but one of the things I learned from my last build is instead of painting them metallic is to polish them out instead. It gives a more natural look.
Each wheel has 40 spokes so its a case of drilling out 80 holes, ensuring each is angled in the right direction. The hub is polished, not as much, and drilled out as well.
Once I am sure it is all right, I will trim the excess spokes and add a touch of CA to each end. That was the front wheel. I guess it took about 5 hours of drilling, polishing and lacing.
Great start Michael, some intricate spaghetti-weaving going on to get those spokes all aligned properly!
The Group Build program will continue as planned, in my opinion we just need to persist until more people are comfortable with navigating around the new site.
Great build Michael - once again you dangle the MFH carrot in front of me tempting me to buy one of their kits .
Lacing the wheel is indeed the correct term and it looks like you are doing well with it .
I’ll be following along for sure.
Michael,
I didn’t think that there’s a much harder 1/12 scale build offering from MFH then their current F1 and GT cars, but a bike is certainly a whole new ballgame.
What a great start to the lacing of the wheels. And polishing rather then painting the hub and rims really looks like the real thing.
Just one question, I had wire wheels on my MGB and I managed to damage a few in Time trials. The part of the spoke that feeds into the hub was angled. Are the Ducati’s spokes angled as well, and if so do they provide a jig of some kind or even a paper profile to accurately produce that bend?
Recently read on one of my motorcycle sites that the carbs were specifically made in pairs for these bikes and are extremely rare -
made of “ unobtanium “ as they say . The last pair that came on the market traded for over $ 10 k .
Yikes !
Great to have you along Richard.
One day I will have to find out why wire wheels went out of fashion for bikes, though now coming back for some new bikes. I know they use to be hell to clean, maybe it was just a weight issue. Anyway it was an interesting challenge.
Hi Joel,
Thanks for the support. I am not an expert on wire wheels but what MFH provided was a centring jig for the hub and rim. In their usual fashion, they provided dimples for where the holes are meant to be and invite you to drill them out. In this build the spokes are meant to enter the hub on an angle and I drilled the holes that way, only about 1mm, as you just need the tip to sit there with a touch of CA. What it was on the actual bike I don’t know. I haven’t seen a picture for this bike I think they may originally entered the hub perpendicularly and the spoke bent on an angle back towards its point on the rim.
As with all classics, cars or bikes, original parts are an issue. No less with the Ducati 750SS. I have seen them for sale where there disparaging comments about how original they are etc, especially since that is where all the value is.
I watched a great video of a guy in California who bought his new in 1974 and finally decided to sell it last year. It’s a discussion mainly about the attractions of the bike etc but he did his own maintenance and even 45 years later it looked pretty good. It made me buy the kit since I will never be able to buy the real thing.
Here’s the link if you’re interested Earned: The Story of Keith Hale’s Ducati 750ss on Vimeo
Well for a change from lacing spoke wheels I have been building the chain over the last couple of days.
Components are a sheet of photo etch clips. The beauty of these, and the sheer relief, that they don’t need to be cut from the gate.
I don’t have a technical name for the other part of the links, but they’re in white metal and needed a quick clean up with a sharp blade. The metal flash flicks off with a knife.
I needed to do four in all, as the chain is 112 links.
You will have noticed at this stage the links are still attached to their “sprue”. This was the slowest part of the chain build, cleaning up the pieces. A sharp knife will remove the excess and round off the piece. (When building with white metal it is easy to cut with a #11 blade but you do go through a few of them)
Great job Michael ! I’m just about to start on the Tamiya PE chain for the RC 166 . Their approach is a little different . Is your Duc 1/9 scale ?
Cheers -Richard
Michael,
OMG!!! That chain looks amazing. Of course the amount of work to produce it is just as amazing.
the trend to use sticky tape to hold the individual pcs of a fret in place is certainly a God send for sure. Removing them was hard enough for me as I often damaged some pcs, but then trying to file off the remaining nubs was usually a disaster.
Thanks Ryan. I haven’t built a tank since I was a kid but I do follow the builds on Armorama. The metal tracks look interesting and a bit like this chain, I guess a matter of repetition and getting into the rhythm.
First off, great build! And I though lacing new aluminum Sun rims was hard…
Love anything motorcycle related. That chain is off the hook.
As for the PE, the idea of not having it attached to anything goes back to at least 1989. I had a caboose detail set in HO scale the was like that. I was to laugh when MiG tried to claim it as his idea years later.
Hi Richard, 1/9 scale. I guess there is a whole history on why manufacturers chose 1/19 scale for large scale bikes. I will be interested to see how Tamiya handled the chain and the wheels.
Cheers Joel. The “floating” PE must be a more complex thing to achieve since they don’t do with the other etch in the kit. As you, say it would have been a nightmare to clean up each link, especially since I used 240 of them.
