DucCutters: Bull Elefant (Bill Johnson)

DucCutters Custom Italian Motorcycles

Bull Elefant
Project By: Bill Johnson (azbill@DucCutters.com)

The Elefant was about 90% stock when I bought it. It has aftermarket exhaust, a couple cuts in the seat, a few deep scratches in the body work (stock metallic blue with Ducati logos), missing the bush gaurds, broken brake/clutch levers and bold tires. The electrical system was unstable and I quickly realized the front head had a damaged exhaust valve as well.

I took the the front fender off at PMD to have it repaired. It has stress cracks on both sides of the support arms. as well as polished out the bodywork.

Working with a Ducati mechanic friend, we replaced out the voltage regulator and re-did some of the wiring to fix the eletrical issues. Then address the the head issue. We dropped the enigne and pulled both heads to check all the valves. At which point we decided to go ahead and install a FBF 944 piston kit. Being concern with possible heat build up on the upper cylinder and installed two 12v fans to pull and direct air under the fuel tank shroud. The shock small valve head was screwed. So we soursed a set of large valve 900SS heads and spark boxes for the convertion.

Reassembling the bike we changed the cam belts, oil and clutch pack. Then installed a LED tail light with integraded turnsinals to clean up the rear end. The exahust sytem was sent out to HPC and ceramic coated. When it returned we mounted up the new TailGunner 4" fighter slip on exhaust and tuned the completed system.

I stalled a small MotoGadget "MotoScope Mini" digital tpeedo/tach, with a custom bracket on top of the dash. Much more accurate then the old stock gauges. I mounted up Kolpin brush guards with integrated mirrors and replaced the stock levers with shorty MotoWorks Brembo levers.

After several long rides on and off road, I decided to clean up the body work. I was going to pain the bike gloss black, but changed my mind and cread some large custom graphic for the bike instead. The stock metallic blue reminded me of the "Red Bull race car in F1", so the graphics at first glace look like RedBull logos. But the when you really look at them, them Elefants! Kind of a modern Dakar Red Bull theme.

I also got a new set of 15F/42R tooth sprockets and Metzler Tourance tires. I wanted Pirelli Scorpions, but couldn't find a 19" front tire available.

My new project was going to be to remove the stock gauge completely and build a GPS and storage area. But one of my buddies jumped in and wanted to buy the bike from me to race in SoCal. So I let it go and moved on to another project...