This is the story about a poor 1987 Ducati Paso 750 that had a difficult life. We originally bought this bike for Vicki as a project for me to fix up and to be a back-up bike for Vicki when completed, but somewhere along the way it became mine. Vicki said that she would feel guilty taking the bike that I put so much work into. I think it has a lot to do with her getting a 2000 Yamaha YZF-R1 and a 2001 Ducati Monster. The Paso will hopefully share duties with the Harley after it rolls 100,000 miles.

Despite a previous experience with a Honda Rebel bought off of eBay and telling myself I'd never buy another vehicle from the auction site, we found this bike in an eBay auction and listed as not running, but pretty much complete. Here's what the only picture of the bike looked like in the auction...



Here it is when we brought it home and I loosely stuck the slip-ons onto it for the photos...

Fortunately, the bike came with all the bodywork, and it was all in pretty good condition. A few parts were removed from the bike and a few small things were missing, but, that's all part of the fun in having an older project bike.....working on it and finding parts! We were told that it had an 820cc big-bore kit installed, an aftermarket Dellorto twin-carb conversion, new battery, and a new voltage regulator, but we waited until we got home to start investigating just what we had gotten ourselves into.


Originally, we were hoping it only needed a good cleaning of the carburators and a tank drain and refill, but after diving into the bike, I knew I had my hands full. I decided to document a lot of the things that had to be addressed to get it streetable. It took almost two years and nearly twice the original purchase price to get it back on the road. Click on any of the buttons below to see and read about the saga as it unfolded itself to me:








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