Disco Duck - 2001 Ducati Monster 900ie

This is Vicki's 2001 Ducati Monster 900ie "Metallic". I made the mistakeof making an offer on it that I thought would be refused, but three days later, I was signing paperwork. Because of this rare and sparkly paintjob, we had affectionately named this Ducati the "Disco Duck".






I had seen this Monster the last two times it was for sale at our local Ducati dealer (Touring Sport BMW/Ducati/Aprilia). They just can't seem to get rid of the bike, as each time it was sold, it would come back to be resold, again. Vicki, Audrey, and I were wastign time one Saturday and I pointed the bike out to her. She liked it and Rob, the salesguy, told me to make an offer....Long story short, I bought the bike three days later. This was a couple of days before the Ducks Along the Blue Ridge rally that is sponsored by US Desmo each year. I didn't tell Vicki about buying the bike, and being at the rally gave me great opportunities to tease her about being on a Jap bike at a Ducati rally.




The Tuesday after DABR, I rode the Harley over to Touring Sport and rode the Monster home. When I got there, I coasted into the driveway and parked the bike where I normally park the Harley. I went inside and asked Vicki if she wanted to run into town to pick up my bike. Here, she thought I was talking about the Paso which was at Motorcycle Parts Plus for a carb synchronizing and other minor set-ups to get it to run correctly. We went to leave, and she just walked right past the Monster! I don't know if it is a sign that she was having a bad day or that we have too many bikes, but it was funny.












The paint is really wild and not common for a factory finish. It is a grayish salt-n-pepper look when in the shade, but when direct sunlight hit it, it has a brilliant multitude of colors. The bike definitely earns its model name of "Metallic" when the sunlight hits the tank. The bike appears to be mainly stock with the only visual modification are the Termignoni high-mount slip-ons. The bike seems to run and handle really well and I'm in the process of installing a shifter on it for Vicki. She did get to ride it nearly 100 mile in second gear by planning a back-road route that was ideal for second gear, but she can't wait to run it through the gears and give it a good test run.

Here's a shot of Audrey giving her approval of mom's new motorcycle.




This is what I (Terry) think of the paint:




The shifter was installed in about two days. I guess having experience with installing three of these in the past and all of them being custom applications made this one a little easier. I took a different approach by making the bracket a two-piece unit. The first is an aluminum piece that replaces two spacers placed behind the rearset. I believe these spacers were installed to give clearance to the high-mount exhaust. This aluminum section will stay on the bike and will clear the front sprocket cover so that the rearset does not have to be removed each time the front sprocket needs to be accessed. It also will mount the shifter solenoid close enough to the engine that the shifter peg will be retained and is useable. The other bracket is just a simple steel bracket bolted to the aluminum one with two bolts. The steel bracket I used for this was the used one that came with this shifter (bought used at a good price). It isn't necessarily good looking, but I will fix that by painting it once we give the shifter a good workout.







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