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I picked up the Ducati motor for the vintage trials bike project yesterday. It's been fitted with the heavy brass flywheel and converted to 12 volts. He tells me it's a 5 speed also. He didn't fit the cylinder head but I can handle that easy enough when the time comes. He hooked me up with a shifter lever and a rectifier, so I should be set except for a carburetor. He said he might have something that will work, likewise, I might have something that will work. He likes the Amals, 26 mm is the size he recommends.

He said when I get ready to fire it up, let him know and he'll either come down or I can take the bike back to him for the initial start-up. He'll get the timing set, the carb adjusted, etc. He knows these things, quite literally, inside and out. I want to stay on the jitney project for a while but the plan is to get the bike all assembled, do a little shake-down ride or two and then take it apart this winter and get it painted or powder coated, put it back together and be ready to go for next spring.

While I was there he gave me a job to work on for him. Someone had stripped out the sparkplug threads and did some half-assed repair by installing a plumbing bushing that had been rethreaded internally for a 14mm plug. It works mostly but leaks compression through the threads on the outside of the bushing. I think the factory plug might have been a 12 mm but I'm not sure. I'll pull the plug out of my head and double check and then decide on the action plan. He's in no hurry but I don't want it laying around here. Get it done, get it gone.