The Long Hard Road, Chapter Two

Slowly I returned to health. When I felt sturdy enough, I rolled the Ducati 888 into the corner of the shed and covered it up. Right down to the axles. Already it felt part of my past. My relationship with the bike had ended. I’d lavished great amounts of attention and money on it and been generously rewarded. The race I’d won on it remains one of my great moments on a motorcycle. Great loves don’t have to last forever to leave an indelible imprint. I was excited to move on to what was next. Whatever that next would be.

In the 10 years since I’d built the Ducati into a race bike, the organization I race in, Canada’s Vintage Road Racing Association (VRRA), had broadened its machine eligibility window to include Ducati’s 748 and 916. I’d owned an early 916 but only ever ridden it on the street. With only 100 or so rear-wheel horsepower, the bike was hardly a demon, but its committed riding position (that, oddly, I found palatable) was the least of its issues as a street bike. Early four-valve Ducati superbikes — and by early I mean pre-Panigale-era Ducatis — enjoy life only when exercised vigorously. Lugging them around at anything close to the speed limit is an exercise in mechanical emasculation.

I’d long had my eye on a bike for sale. A race-ready 1997 Ducati 748 SP — the 916’s little brother. It hadn’t been used much in recent years, but it had the good bits on it. And, significantly, much stronger crankcases than the early four-valve bikes. In true Ducati fashion, the factory race bikes are considerably different than consumer bikes. But this 748 had many of the upgrades that a period race bike would have had. Including an extended magnesium swingarm, a good dollop of carbon fiber, and Öhlins suspension front and rear. On top of it, the 748s short-stroke engine was known to rev more freely than the 916’s. Pair it with a close-ratio gearbox and it was a combination I was keen to sample. Right up until it blew up.

As part of its recommissioning from years of slumber, owner and bike-builder Paul Hewitt had taken the 748 to a shop to loosen it up on the dyno. All was going well until a circlip that held a camshaft bearing let go and slipped down into the combustion chamber, taking with it the top half of the engine. As winter turned to spring, the parts to rebuild the engine had come in but had yet to be assembled. Time was ticking. Ultimately, I had a choice: let the bike go or buy it as is. I took a leap.

I come from a mechanical family. My brothers work in the trades and our father was a machinist. To be from my family is to be a fixer and a builder. And on motorcycles (and reluctantly on cars) I’ve done just about everything. On Ducatis I’ve changed belts and, rather excruciatingly until I got the hang of it, taught myself to set desmodromic valves. But the deep innards of an engine is a different story. One slight mistake and thousands of dollars of parts combust in a heartbeat. Especially when it’s a race bike engine. Doubly so when it’s a Ducati.

With the engine’s components set out on my lift, I came to the horrifying realization I’d actually have to do something to turn it into a running engine. Furrowing my brow and organizing parts into tidy rows, like a server in a three-star Michelin restaurant aligning cutlery, was getting me nowhere. I started with what I thought was the most basic task of all, setting the piston ring gap. With the base of the piston I pushed a loose piston ring into the bore. Then I measured the gap where the ends meet with feeler gauges and set it to the piston maker’s specifications with a hand grinder. Simple. Except I became far too interested in mechanical miscellanea and dove down so many rabbit holes I began to hop instead of walk. Time to pick up the pace.

Mercifully, the bottom of the engine remained assembled. After the piston rings gaps were set and the rings installed on the pistons, I set about putting the pistons on the connecting rods. Except the gudgeon pins didn’t want to slide into the con-rods. Barrel-chested men on YouTube told me not to use inappropriate force, but they didn’t suggest how to measure appropriate force. (Sidebar: the word gudgeon is a favorite, perhaps because it sounds like dungeon. A gudgeon is also a European freshwater fish, a fool easily duped or cheated, and a socket attached to the stern of a boat for holding the pintle of a rudder. Also note that chasing down the etymology of peculiar words is an excellent procrastination exercise for the engine builder lacking confidence.)

Eventually, I found my footing. Remembering what I’d seen my father do when I was a kid, I popped the gudgeon pin in the freezer and while waiting for it to cool — and shrink — I gently warmed the piston and connecting rod with a heat gun. The pleasure of feeling the pin slide gently into place and bump into the circlip on the far side of the piston was glorious. One down. One to go.

I’d assembled desmo heads before, so I was comfortable with this. Much lore surrounds setting Ducati valves, and while initially it’s baffling, it just takes time and repetition to get it down. What I’d done so far was fairly straightforward, but setting squish was a serious matter. Squish is the distance between the top of the piston and the cylinder head. One millimeter is the desired result. Mess it up and set it to eight-tenths of a mm is to flirt with disaster, apparently. With pieces of 2 mm solder taped across the piston crowns, I torqued down the cylinder heads then rotated the engine by hand. Then I took the engine apart and measured the thickness of the squished solder with a caliper and found it to be 1.5 mm. Too much. I swapped out the spacers at the base of the cylinders for thinner ones then repeated the entire exercise. I landed at 1.1 mm. After what I’ve been through, an extra tenth of a mm seemed an appropriate safety margin.

If all of this sounds exceedingly tedious, you’re right. Especially when much of the exercise had to be repeated to determine valve to piston clearance. Only this time I used modelling clay on top of the pistons. Build it up, spin it over, take it apart, and take the measurement. The goal is a clearance of no less than 1.5 mm. I landed on 1.7 mm. Moving on.

To summarize this exercise with the written word is to give the impression it didn’t take long. But weeks passed as I waited for gaskets and seals or took time to research a task. Long evenings in the shed were punctuated by restless dreams in which pistons exploded and sent valves shooting into the sky as the engine melted in a ball of molten fury. And oil, every dream was doused in oil, dripping from the sky and running like warm chocolate onto ice cream. Springtime mornings met with staggering exhaustion — right up until the engine was built and installed in the frame.

The whirring of the fuel pump as I turned the ignition on was a reassuring sound. Then I leaned slightly back, gritted my teeth, and pushed the starter with the same trepidation I have when I do household electrical work. (I know the circuit breaker is thrown but touching those ominous black wires still feels wrong.) Whump-whump boom, went the engine. It was running. I stepped back. And tried to distract my mind from the chaos of all those internal parts moving at breakneck speed. Then I fell to my knees and with a flashlight looked for signs of horrible things while I listened for ominous sounds. Everything was just fine. I’d done it. I’d built an engine.

I wish I could write that the first track test on the new bike carried on the triumphant theme manifested at the end of the previous paragraph. Not so. On my second lap the radiator reservoir exploded at near 120 mph and covered me in water hot enough to make tea. I was thankful I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. After limping back to the paddock, I called my go-to man when I need to talk to someone who’s seen everything Ducati. Steve Hicks’s day job is as Ducati North America’s national service manager for Canada. Before that he was a Ducati dealer. And before that he built monstrous drag bikes with 10-foot wheelbases. Nothing fazes him. Steve said what I wanted to find was a radiator reservoir cap with a weak spring. Otherwise, it was a head gasket leaking combustion chamber pressure into the cooling system. I doubled-up the gasket under the reservoir cap and was again doused in scorching water. It was a head gasket.

There was a wordless feeling between Laura and I that this — all of this — was cursed. All I wanted was to start and finish a race. But I couldn’t even make the start. I’d missed the first race of the season building the engine, and now I’d missed the second due to a blown head gasket. The four-race schedule was at its midway point and I’d yet to participate. We packed up from the track, I emailed the organizer to cancel my registration for the race weekend that started the next day, and we drove home. “When you’re going through hell,” said Winston Churchill, “keep going.” The only way out of this mess was straight through the other side of it. 

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