COLLECTOR
Meet the Italian responsible for restoring all the singles on display at the Ducati museum – and when he gets home from the Bologna factory he starts work on his own bikes
Ace Ducati desmo singles restorer Enea Entati’s clutch of beauties
Enea Entati’s passion for Ducati singles was nurtured from the day he started working in a Ducati dealership in Mantova when he was only 15 years old. “Seven years later I opened my own garage and specialised in bevel-drive Ducatis,” says Entati, now 64 and retired. “But then the home motorcycle market crashed.”
In the late 1970s only a handful of people worked on motorcycle production at the Ducati factory, as the Italian government – which had owned Ducati since the late 1940s – had decided that the future lay in diesel engine production. Entati had to start servicing cars alongside motorcycles, and eventually opened a Peugeot dealership. “But my heart has always belonged to Ducati,” he adds. With a passion.
Entati has restored all the Ducati singles on display at the Ducati museum. He and two friends can usually be found in one of the small rooms in the oldest part of the factory, not 200 metres from the blocked-up entrance to the tunnel that used to link the end of the production line to the train station in Bologna. This is where you’ll find old works racers as well as less exotic fare on the bench.
Indeed it was a very humble Ducati that led to his close relationship with the factory and the company’s museum
‘MY HEART HAS ALWAYS BELONGED TO DUCATI. I SPECIALISED IN BEVEL DRIVE’
in Borgo Panigale, Bologna. Entati had taken his freshly restored Ducati 65T to a huge autojumble in Reggio Emilia, north-west of Bologna, and he was feeling pretty pleased with himself. The engine might have been little more than an over-bored Cucciolo (Ducati’s clip-on four-stroke engine used for post-wwii motorised bicycles), but this was one of Ducati’s first real motorcycles. And he wasn’t the only person at the jumble who was smitten by the 65T. Gianluigi Mengoli had made the 90km trip from Bologna – and when he saw the little Ducati, he had to have it. Mengoli just happens to be Ducati’s technical director and also one of the longest-serving members of the company’s staff, having started working there way back in 1966. He worked with Fabio Taglioni from 1973 until the ’80s when the designer of the famous desmodromic valve gear retired, and was the man responsible for the Pantah – the bike that spawned the current generation of race and road bikes. In 1999, when Mengoli met Entati at Reggio Emilia, reigning World Superbike Champion Carl Fogarty was defending his title against Colin Edwards and Honda. So you’d think that Mengoli would have had more important things on his plate than 65kph tiddlers. But Mengoli is a Ducati man to the core – and not only that, he also wanted to build a Ducati museum. Impressed by the quality of Entati’s work, Mengoli took the 65T home and commissioned him to carry out two more restorations – a 1956 125 TV and a Cruiser scooter, a very advanced piece of kit when it debuted back in 1951 with a singlecylinder 175cc ohv engine, auto gearbox and electric start. “As payment for the work, Mengoli gave me the prototype of the Paul
‘AS PAYMENT I WAS GIVEN THE PROTOTYPE OF THE
PAUL SMITH REPLICA’
Smart Replica,” says Entati. Yes, it seems that the factory really was thinking of making one that long ago! But back on Enea’s favourite subject – Ducati desmo singles, and specifically Taglioni’s 98cc Gran Sport (aka the Marianna) which dominated its class in Italian racing and became the blueprint for this dynasty of small-capacity machines. “The Marianna is a beautiful motorcycle,” says Entati as he caresses a hand-beaten alloy petrol tank. “Taglioni’s Gran Sport transformed the fortunes of Ducati,” he adds. “It is a stupendous engine.” What Taglioni came up with was a technically advanced bevel-driven singleoverhead camshaft design. The Gran Sport 100 may have been fitted with lights, a horn and kickstart, but make no mistake – this was a genuine production racer. With a bore and stroke of 49.4 x 52mm, the 98cc single used a forged piston to give a compression ratio of 8.5:1. A steeply downdraught 20mm SS1 Dell’orto carburettor was fitted with a huge bellmouth. Exposed hairpin valve springs were used so they could be changed quickly if they tired in a long-distance race. Because this was never going to be a production motorcycle, the crankcases were sandcast to keep down costs. The engine was canted forward for better cooling, with oil carried in the sump. Straightcut gears were used for the primary drive, with a close-ratio four-speed transmission. Running on 17in wheels and skinny 2.75in tyres the Gran Sport weighed in at 80kg before a drop of petrol splashed into the lightweight alloy gas tank. Ducati claimed 9hp at 9000rpm and a top speed of over 130kph (80mph) – and even this was soon increased to 12hp and 140kph (87mph). Now it was time for the Gran Sport to show its paces. The 100cc Duke made its race debut on the feast day of St Anna Maria, and so it immediately became known as the Marianna. In March 1955 Degli Antoni romped home to win the 100cc class of the Motogiro with a 98.90kph (61.45mph) average. Next up was the Milan-taranto, and again Antoni triumphed, covering the 870-mile distance at a stunning 103.172kph (64.108mph) average. Behind him was a string of Ducatis filling every place back to 13th. Taglioni was one very happy man. But although he carried on developing the Gran Sport into a 125cc double-overhead camshaft and, of course, the large-capacity desmodromic racers, Taglioni’s bosses knew that production models paid the bills. So he went back to the drawing board – and came up with a beveldrive overhead-cam road bike. The first of the new roadsters were the 125S sports model and two 175cc versions, one aimed at the sporty rider and the other at the tourist. These three were to become the foundation of Ducati’s four-stroke designs. The 125 spawned 100 and 160cc variations, while the 175 grew to 200, 250, 350 and even 450cc. The bevel-drive ohc roadsters made their debut at the Milan Show in November 1956. Like the Gran Sport, the 175 was an all-alloy unit construction engine with the camshaft drive by vertical shaft and bevel gears on the right, but they were helical gears for quieter operation than the straight-cut gears of the racer. Hairpin valve springs were now hidden under alloy covers. Production models also featured helical gears in the primary drive instead of straight cut. Like the Gran Sport, the crankcases were split vertically with a large, finned oil sump. The engine’s bottom-end featured a robust ball and roller bearing assembly. Both 175T (Turismo) and the 175S (Sport) shared the same 62 x 57.8mm engine. The short stroke was to give low piston speeds and the big bore to allow for maximum valve size. But the star of the show was the 175S. While the Turismo was fitted with a small solo saddle and was finished in dark red with white panels on the 17-litre tank (with equally boring black-and-white or black-and-red
‘THE SELLER DIDN’T WANT TO TAKE IT HOME, SO I GOT IT FOR A VERY GOOD PRICE’
tank options) the Sport was finished in a sparkling metallic cherry red for the tank, mudguards and toolboxes with metallic gold for the frame, forks and swingarm. Metallic gold panels on the petrol tank made the 175S a real stunner. With a compression ratio of 8:1 and a sporty UB 22.5 BS2 Dell’orto breathing through a velocity stack instead of the Turismo’s air filter, the Sport delivered 14bhp at 8000rpm and a top speed of 83mph. Now that was impressive – in 1956 the most you’d get out of a BMW R50 was 90mph, while a 500cc AJS would top out at 80. With a race-bred chassis, Taglioni’s bevel-drive Duke might have been a giant killer but it was hardly a gas guzzler, almost matching the petrol-sipping economy of the Turismo. It all goes to show why Entati is nuts about bevel drive Ducati singles. And he doesn’t stop when he gets home from the Ducati museum. That’s when he starts working on his own collection (some of which are shown here), which also includes everything from Ducati mopeds and scooters to radios and hair-clippers. He obviously has a very understanding wife.