GOING GREEN
CB man Alan Cathcart got in early by ordering a 750SS in 1972 – and has owned a couple more since. He still races one of the iconic green-framed Ducatis. Just try not to get too envious as you read his diary of desmo desire…
In 1974-75 Ducati built 401 examples in its factory race shop of the green-frame 750SS – their first-ever desmo V-twin model, and a close cousin to the bike on which Paul Smart won the 1972 Imola 200 – and at one time or another, I’ve been lucky enough to own three of them. I waited patiently for the long-promised customer replica of Smartie’s racer to become available… but over two years passed since that historic victory. Then finally, in late July 1974, I got a call from Mick Walker Motorcycles in Wisbech, telling me to come and pick up the bike I’d ordered. I remember the skip of my heartbeat when I walked into the workshop where Mick’s brother Richard was prepping the bike – it was mine, all mine! Well, as soon as I’d written Mick a cheque for £1600 ‘less fuel tank’ (see receipt on the right), that is. Stylist Leopoldo Tartarini’s symphony in glassfibre with that gorgeous clear strip down the centre to act as a fuel gauge was illegal in Britain, so I had to hand over £79 in readies because it had to be sold separately! The ride to my parents’ Warwickshire home where I planned to keep the Ducati initially on a glorious midsummer day is still etched in my memory. Despite the warm weather, it hadn’t been easy to fire it up from cold at Mick Walker’s, but eventually I got the hang of it. You had to ‘feel’ it on to the front cylinder with the kickstart lever – the engine runs backwards – then deliver a lusty throw of the leg while trying hard not to flood the engine via the accelerator jets mounted in the Dell’orto carbs (which had no choke). Get it right – and the glorious wall of sound emanating from the gorgeouslooking Conti silencers was pure motorcycling nirvana. But get it wrong – as I did all too often on a dead-engine Production race grid, and you’d be kicking your way to Bologna before the desmo V-twin would reluctantly fire up on a single cylinder, with the other begrudgingly joining in a little later.
Running-in the 750SS was like having the keys to Smartie’s Imola winner and being told you couldn’t take it over four grand for the first 1000 miles. Fortunately, my American flat-mate Jeff Craig shared running-in duties with me, and in no time we had it over the grand in miles, and could start giving it the berries. Well, after changing the oil three times – as we’d been told to do at 300, 600 and 1000-mile intervals, with a gallon of fresh Shell Multigrade after tilting the bike right over to ensure all the old lubricant was gone. The only owner’s manual I was given was for a 750GT, which was pretty useless; my maintenance and running-in instructions consisted of what I wrote down on the back of Mick Walker’s receipt. This included tips on how to check the desmo valve clearances and a warning to watch out for the valve springs breaking – yes, a desmo engine does have light ones to close the valves the last thou or two for ease of starting. Mine were fine – I just needed to improve my technique! Riding PJE 29N increasingly hard brought home the benefits of what was a superlative, hard-edged but totally trustworthy mile-eater. The stretched-out riding position meant you could tuck away easily behind the screen, revelling in the super-stable handling from that long 1530mm wheelbase, which never became unduly cumbersome in tighter turns. The whole bike felt finely poised and well balanced, although the Marzocchi suspension felt pretty stiff, as befitted a racer with lights. Fortunately, the worker assembling my bike had dipped his hand into the relevant parts bin and come up with Lockheed calipers all round (some bikes had inferior Scarabs) which, combined with Brembo’s cast iron discs, delivered a new dimension in stopping power and feel. I had begun road racing in 1974 aboard an ex-works Ducati 250 Mach 1/S single, which threw a rod, big time, one Wednesday afternoon at a Brands Hatch practice day, so the 750SS was pressed into track use earlier than I had expected. My girlfriend Stella (soon to be my wife) and I spent a couple of nights after work race-prepping the Ducati – wiring things up, fitting race plates, taping over the lights, etc – for my last Bemsee club race meeting that year at Brands Hatch in October. Bemsee’s ever-helpful Aussie Secretary Barbara Bailey swapped my entries over free of charge, and I spent a couple of hour-long attempts to improve my kickstart technique. I also tried to talk myself into being very careful on right-handers (basically most of Brands)