StolenS4

2026-08-02T03:11:12Z

Db: /* Final Final 08/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

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The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

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At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
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Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
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==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

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[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
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Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
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[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
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==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

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Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
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==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

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Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
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==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

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Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
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==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

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[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
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==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

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'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work ever to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
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==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

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[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
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==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

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[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
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==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

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[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

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[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
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==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

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[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Final Final 08/2026==
While riding this bike for the first time a few weeks ago was a real highlight, I always love the day I am able to clean, put in the yard and take proper pictures of one of my builds. Today was the day. Building these things take a lot of a lot. Getting proper photos on a final product is very hard, you are always waiting for some part, or some detail that is holding up that day when you take photos!

I am very happy with this bike for a number of reasons: I personally love how over the top is it in terms of colors, details, special parts. Beyond that, this bike is about as good as it gets for a monster. Sure I would love a welded single sides swingerarm (those who know me know I love them) but then I would have simply taken an important S4 to me and made it like an S4R. The S4 was the first 4valve monster and it is special to me, it is a great cross between the 851/888 and the monster which is based on the same chassis originally but took ten years to get the same motor. Let's be honest, it is everything a super bike is not, hot ass, brutal on the wrists, all neck. The Monster S4 with slight rise clipons, proper suspension, SBK braking, slight engine mods, '''is about as perfect as it gets'''.

Many will hate it like they hate my other builds, if you are one of those people please close this page and go find someone who gives a shit about what you think.

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

StolenS4

2026-08-02T02:28:55Z

2026-08-02T02:20:57Z

Db: /* Final Final 08/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

<center>
The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

</center>
At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
<center>

Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
</center>
==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
</center>

Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
<center>
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

<center>
Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
</center>
==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

<center>
Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

<center>
Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
</center>

==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

<center>
'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work ever to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>

==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
</center>
==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
</center>
==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
</center>
==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Final Final 08/2026==
While riding this bike for the first time a few weeks ago was a real highlight, I always love the day I am able to clean, put in the yard and take proper pictures of one of my builds. Today was the day. Building these things take a lot of a lot. Getting proper photos on a final product is very hard, you are always waiting for some part, or some detail that is holding up that day when you take photos!

I am very happy with this bike for a number of reasons: I personally love how over the top is it in terms of colors, details, special parts. Beyond that, this bike is about as good as it gets for a monster. Sure I would love a welded single sides swingerarm (those who know me know I love them) but then I would have simply taken an important S4 to me and made it like an S4R. The S4 was the first 4valve monster and it is special to me, it is a great cross between the 851/888 and the monster which is based on the same chassis originally but took two years to get the same motor.

Many will hate it like they hate my other builds, if you are one of those people please close this page and go find someone who gives a shit about what you think.

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

StolenS4

2026-08-02T02:20:41Z

Db: /* Final Final 08/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

<center>
The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

</center>
At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
<center>

Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
</center>
==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
</center>

Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
<center>
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

<center>
Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
</center>
==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

<center>
Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

<center>
Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
</center>

==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

<center>
'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work ever to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>

==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
</center>
==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
</center>
==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
</center>
==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Final Final 08/2026==
While riding this bike for the first time a few weeks ago was a real highlight, I always love the day I am able to clean, put in the yard and take proper pictures of one of my builds. Today was the day.

Building these things take a lot of a lot. Getting proper photos on a final product is very hard, you are always waiting for some part, or some detail that is holding up that day when you take photos!

I am very happy with this bike for a number of reasons: I personally love how over the top is it in terms of colors, details, special parts. Beyond that, this bike is about as good as it gets for a monster. Sure I would love a welded single sides swingerarm (those who know me know I love them) but then I would have simply taken an important S4 to me and made it like an S4R. The S4 was the first 4valve monster and it is special to me, it is a great cross between the 851/888 and the monster which is based on the same chassis originally but took two years to get the same motor.

Many will hate it like they hate my other builds, if you are one of those people please close this page and go find someone who gives a shit about what you think.

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

StolenS4

2026-08-02T02:15:40Z

Db: /* Final Final 08/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

<center>
The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

</center>
At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
<center>

Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
</center>
==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
</center>

Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
<center>
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

<center>
Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
</center>
==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

<center>
Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

<center>
Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
</center>

==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

<center>
'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work ever to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>

==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
</center>
==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
</center>
==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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<source src="https://db.ibenson.com/images/c/cd/StolenS4-FirstRun.mov" type="video/quicktime">
Your browser does not support the video tag.
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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
</center>
==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Final Final 08/2026==

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Left-High-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Back-Right-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Front-Low-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cluster-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Cockpit-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Engine-Right-Detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-Left-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Headlight-right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Right-Dash-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Tank-Right-Top-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Suspension-s.JPG|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|link=File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG|center|700px]]

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

File:StolenS4-Rear-Wheel-Left-detail-s.JPG

2026-08-02T02:14:36Z

Db:

2026-08-02T01:56:49Z

2026-07-30T01:59:16Z

Db: /* Body back from paint 02/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

<center>
The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

</center>
At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
<center>

Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
</center>
==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
</center>

Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
<center>
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

<center>
Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
</center>
==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

<center>
Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

<center>
Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
</center>

==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

<center>
'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work ever to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>

==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
</center>
==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
</center>
==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
</center>
==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

StolenS4

2026-07-30T01:58:01Z

Db: /* Gauge Cluster install 07/2026 */

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[[File:header4.jpg|link=WideOpen]]

<span style="color:#f7b304">[[IBenson:About|About]] | [[Motos|Two Wheels]] | [[Autos |Four Wheels]] | [[Trips |Trips]] | [[WideOpen |Home]]

==There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2024==

Warning, 17mile story ahead.

Long long ago when I was building the 888LTD for Wally, there was a need for a set of 5spoke Marchesini wheels which many know are impossible to find for the 851/888 platform. My solution at the time was to find an S4 and buy it for the wheels which we did. I found a decent bike in upstate NY and drove out and paid cash for it (well, wally paid cash for it). The bike was your base model Monster S4, all stock, red, a good bike.

After stealing the wheels I was left wondering what fun could be had with a monster when left to my own devices and I think we found the way. I sourced a set of Sport classic wire wheels and a handful of other bits and started to goto work on the bike. The first thing to do was to paint the red away which I did with BMW's laguna sec blue (the same color as my race bikes at the time), then was the wheel swap, slipper clutch, power commander, clip ons and a saw to the exhaust.

The result was awesome: A loud, fun little run around with a decent amount of power. One of the biggest challanges was getting the gold line brakes to clear the spokes on the wire wheels (remember Ducati's solution to this was to use smaller, less brakes which I was having none of). My solution was to mill down the calipers until they cleared, the risk was blowing into the backs of the calipers and making a mess of my mill (this never happened luckly!)

<center>
The bike was totally stock when purchased, here it is in the back of the truck on its way to my shop in 2007

[[File:SSPX0048.jpg|link=File:SSPX0048.jpg|center|700px]]
I quickly took the bike apart, installed clip-ons, chopped the pipes, added wire wheels and a few other things

[[File:Monster3.jpg|link=File:Monster3.jpg|center|700px]]
I then painted the bike BMW Laguna Seca Blue which was my favorite. Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

[[File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-FrontRight.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-RightRear.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Left.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Dash.jpg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Front.jpg|center|700px]]

Here you can see my mill work on the calipers to get them to clear the spokes. I know, Im nuts!

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper.jpg|center|700px]]

</center>
At the time I lived with a very close friend who I trusted and who didn't have a bike. I offered the bike to him to use and was foolish enough to give him the title and let him register the bike, which he did. A time later he and I had a big falling out where I offered for him to keep the bike, only to be told "Fuck you and your bike, I don't want it". A few weeks later he moved out and the bike left with him which surprised me, after all "fuck me and my bike" right? Well, I tried for 6 or 7 years to get the bike back and was repeatedly told I could buy the bike back which I refused to do.

Time went on and the guy sold or gave the bike to a fellow, who sold or gave the bike to another fellow. Rumors of the bike being for sale floated around and I even tossed a number out there for the bike but it was far too high for what I knew the bike was worth, so I passed. My friend Rocket got a call from the guy who had the bike and was offered the thing at more than half what I was offered it (this happens to me a lot) and Rocket called me to get the bike. I was so pissed about the number that I told him to shove it (so that he would tell the guy who had it to shove it) and that was the end of it. So I thought.

==So there I was, a week before Christmas 12/2024==

Working around the house, doing shit. Im talking to my wife and I hear this noise, a noise that is hard not to recognize, and my wife's smile which is a "I got you" smile. I start laughing and walk out to find Rocket in the driveway, sitting on the S4 in 20degree wheather freezing his ass off but cracking up! She had bought me the bike! Her words were: "Now the collection is all back together". My wife is the shit but little did she know that this move was going to cost me a ton of cash!

Here she is when it was returned to me. The Black livery is questionable, the clip-ons have been removed and a lot of other bits had been changed but overall she was still the bike I had last seen her as.

[[File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|link=File:Stolen-S4-first-delivered.jpeg|center|700px]]

==The buying spree begins 1/2025==

Because I know this bike so well and also know the platform in and out, before even riding this bike I did two things:
*Registered it
*Sourced most of the hard to find parts before taking it apart

The first challenge was a known one. The RI title I had last seen for this bike had a typo where an I was written as a 1 (common in RI long ago). The previous fellow decided to register it in Vermont and not deal with this. I went to the DMV, played dumb and had them check pictures of the stampings and fix the incorrect VIN.

As for sourcing parts, I went a bit haywire (shocker right). I decided go big or don't do it:
*Ohlins SBK fork with Radial bottoms (1198)
*Brembo 1198 radial calipers
*Brembo Radial master clutch and slave
*Speedymoto Monster to SBK triples
*Helibar clipons with a slight rise
*Termi spaghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
*Termi Monster 1100S cans, to be modded to fit the spaghetti systems while retaining the two up riding ability.
*Ohlins rear shock from an ST4s

The bummer about all this is the loss of the wire wheels. One of my favorite parts of this build is a monster with SC wheels but if I want radial brakes, the wheels must go, so they go because I like my brakes more than I like spoked wheels! '''Update''': I was able to make the wire wheels work! more on this later.

==Teardown and playing 10/2025==
With this bike, I didn't need to get her running, she is a runner. Right into the teardown and with it starts the mockup.
<center>

Here she is up on the lift, still basically a bike

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

A little more extreme breakdown:

[[File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-teardown-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

This teardown will be jumping between teardown and mockup so unlike many of my other builds, this bike will look a lot more together throughout its evolution.
</center>
==Frontend build and mockup 10/2025==
For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool (and ride fucking awesome), the old FG43 bottoms are rad and all but really stand for the 90s and early 2000s. With the monster and all its swooping curves, the interegal radials will have a good look with the rest of the bike (I hope), additionally the final OG monster (S4RS) had radial bottoms but where a non SBK fork.

Here you can see them being serviced at Superbike services44 in New Hampshire. It always cracks me up to see the cost savings for ohlins when they only plate in gold the bits you see and not the others

<center>
[[File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-tubes.jpeg|center|700px]]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The same can be said as to how many parts make up a front fork.

[[File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-internals.jpeg|center|700px]]

When it came time to figure out the front end on this bike I was laser focused on an S4RS full front end but they were hard to find and not as good. I then remembered I had this fork in a pile but that it would require unique triples, lucky for me speedy moto dealt with this long ago and made a tripe for it. Im not a huge fan of the black anodizing but it is all I could get! Powder coating will resolve the black issue.

[[File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-triples.jpeg|center|700px]]

For clipons, I went with a set of Helibars that came to me in a bulk buy. They are NOS and give me almost an inch up which should be good for 2up riding which this bike will be used for. I am also toying with wire wheels or 999 wheels, here you can see the 999 option.

[[File:Stolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|link=SFile:tolen4-front-test-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

It is always funny to see a bike with no headlight and no fairing, everything looks wrong.
</center>

Next up I have to figure out the wheel situation. Running a 999 rear in the ST / S4 swingarm is going to be challenging and at the the same time running a wire wheel in the 1198 fork has brake clearance challenges. More to come there in the coming weeks. My pref is wire but they are heavier. I don't know..

==Driveline Mockup 10/2025==
My plan was to run 749/999 wheels on this bike to allow for radial from calipers but much to my delight, the SC wire wheel spokes JUST clear the calipers, I will be milling them a tad just to allow for some more room.

Sticking with the wire wheels on this build makes me very happy, for some reason I have always loved the look of the SC aluminum hub / rim wheels along with road tires (which are not what are on these wheels right now). I have another set of wheels that are un-used that will be getting a set of road tires mounted in the coming weeks.

Monsters look funny without the big ass rearsets installed as you can see. I was thinking about doing away with them for the aesthetic but I want this bike to be good for two up riding so they will be sticking around.
<center>
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Im testing the OG cast iron floating rotors on one side to see how the clearance is, which is perfect. For some reason I love these Tron looking rotors and am happy to have a bike I can run them on (6 bolt with the correct offset), all my other bikes are so modified I had to go other directions.
[[File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-driveline-mock-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body work planning 11/2025==
Talking about bodywork on a monster is the wrong way to put it but I had to come up with something. Those that know the monster know it's entire market is based on the lack of bodywork but here we will talk about the three major parts:
Tank: Monster S4RS
Front fender: Monster 1100S
Seat cowl: Monster S2R

To start I always like to switch it up with the front fenders on these builds so after poking around, I settled on a very modern looking 1100S monster fender, My fingers are crossed here. The Tank is from an S4RS so it is plastic and has a modern internal, removable pickup / pump unit and the cowl is a standard monster unit which I have always had a thing for.

The plan is to have a deep blue base, with a frame matching green center section on all three items, the line on the tank will only goto the fuel fill cap. The Ducati name will come from yellow late 60s ducati stickers.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-pre-paint.jpeg|center|700px]]
==Brake mod to clear the spokes==
The wire wheels on from the Sport Classic are very well built and therefore the spokes come off the very wide hub to get to the Rim, this made clearance a problem from the beginning. Ducati's solution was to use smaller, less good brake calipers which cleared the spokes and used an adapter. On my first go around I milled the calipers to clear the spokes which was required and which gave me proper braking at the time.

This time I was rather surprised to see that the SBK 100MM radial calipers "mostly" cleared the spokes, which the goldline calipers didn't at all. Regardless, I wanted more clearance incase a rock or a piece of a car gets in there, I don't want it to stop the from wheel.

<center>
Here you can see the caliper before being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-pre.jpeg |center|700px]]

And after being milled:

[[File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Caliper-post.jpeg |center|700px]]

These will be powder coated bright yellow which I am excited to see.

==Parts off to Powder 11/2025==
I have always loved taking this picture but I love taking the picture of the parts once they are returned far more.

We will have a a aqua frame and light bucket while having a aluminum silver swingarm, triples, clipons, rearset frames and highlight surround. We will also have yellow suspension link and calipers all around.

[[File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Pre-powder.jpeg|center|700px]]

Once again those purists out there will hate this thing but fuckem, its my bike and my wife bought it back for me and these are her favorite colors.
</center>
==Flywheel swap and a surprise 12/2025==
One of my favorite mods to these bikes is to ditch the flywheel. Lucky for me one popped up and I bought it. Pulling the stator cover off to install the flywheel, I was surprised to find and to remember the time I tossed a chain on this bike. It cracked the stator cover and luckily not the case.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcover.jpeg|center|700px]]

<center>
Here is the OE flywheel and my non-flywheel which is just big enough to hold the stator Mag and the starter bearing. While the flywheel mod makes the bike much more responsive, it can suffer around town at low revs, I don't love low revs so off it goes.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

Installed, you can hardly see the flywheel now.

[[File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-flywheel-install.jpeg|center|700px]]

Prepping the replacement stator cover, next to original unit to the right.

[[File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-statorcovers.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Engine Degrease 12/2025==
After years of use and storage, these motors get pretty nasty and cleaning them up is a PITA. After plugging all the holes, you drag them outside, spray them down with degrees a few times, scrape and brush, then power wash the hell out of them.

<center>
Before starting:
[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-dirty-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

After a lot of scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing and spraying:

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-clean-3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Next up is sanding, masking and painting.
</center>

==Back From Powder 12/2025==
It is always the best time when you get your parts back from being coated. All was well but there was an issue with the lower triple so that had to stay and be re-coated, which I will grab in the new year.

When I dropped the parts off I decided to go more teal than blue on this build and I am happy that I did. I think the Teal, Dark blue and Yellow will all play nicely with one another. My wife bought me this bike (but not all the parts and the rebuild!) so I think it is only suitable that the colors been in her color wheel.

<center>
[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-4.jpeg|center|700px]]

Two things I really dislike on bikes are the colors black and chrome, because of this I coated all the aluminum parts and the headlight ring an aluminum like silver, here I wanted to see how the bucket and rim would play and I think it worked out nicely.

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-2.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally here is Ledger smiling ear to ear checking out his bike that we are building, he is excited because it holds two people..

[[File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Powder-Parts-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Body back from paint 02/2026==
After getting all the body work prepped, I was able to get them to Sean ad SR customs to take it away. On the color front I went a little wild and chose colors my wife would like, in fact we copied a shampoo company who's colors we liked.

I had to toss the yellow in there, I wanted a little flare on this bike on top of the loud colors, this brought the coating of the calipers and suspension link, live a little I say.

This is also the first time I have ever used the 60' Ducati livery, I don't know why this time but thought it would play well with the roundness of the Monster tank. I do love the ducati double lines of the 70s but sometimes you need to do something new..

<center>
'''First thing to know is that this bike is not going to have a black seat (brown), just have the seat here to place parts on parts!'''

[[File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-left.jpeg|center|700px]]

Lots ohh parts!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front.jpeg|center|700px]]

As you can see, I wanted to have some fun with the front fender, hoping it plays out!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

Wings and things...
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tank-right.jpeg|center|700px]]

The monster tail will always be one of my favorite pieces of body work every to leave Bologna. Yuck to that seat!
[[File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-tail.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finally you can see Sean's ability to match paint to powder. Very impressive.
[[File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-front-left.jpeg|center|700px]]
</center>
==Wheels and tires 02/2026==

I flipped back and fourth on the wheels for this bike, mainly because I assumed I could not make the 1098 radials clear the spokes. Before trying I bought 749 wheels and assumed that was my route. For the hell of it I tried the wire wheels and the radials and as you have seen posted above, they did in fact work!

One of my other favorite things Ducati has ever done was to introduce the Sport Classic line with Aluminum rimmed spoked wheels of a normal, modern street bike tire size. 20 years ago I bought two sets of these, one went on the Monster and other to storage. The monster wheels showed signs of age and salty air on the spokes. The second were brand new but have some tarnish on the clear I hope to clean up. I decided to go with the NOS units I had and wrapped them with killer Pirelli's. Is there anything better than a SBK tire on a wire wheel set? I don't think so.

[[File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Body-wheels.jpeg|center|700px]]

==Engine Mask and paint 02/2026==
Once again, a purist would break down these engines, sandblast and repaint. I opted to clean, sand and re-paint as it gives great results with a lot less time spent on an fine running motor.

Masking is a labor of love but one that you must take your time on. Remember I had to replace the side cover from the previous chain loss, this motor was all silver (as all were in this year) but the cover I used was from an earlier motor which still used the green color.

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[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-mask2.jpeg|center|700px]]

During the worst winter in 50 years in Rhode Island, it took weeks to get a window of time where I could paint where the temp was warm enough for the paint. Primer is laid down first, followed by color.

[[File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-primed.jpeg|center|700px]]

Color

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted1.jpeg|center|700px]]

Finish

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-engine-painted3.jpeg|center|700px]]

The next step in the prettying up of an old motor is a stainless bolt kit which will be done later.
</center>
==Initial Build 02/2026==
The second you bolt the frame back onto a Ducati motor, you are hyped for the second you get to ride the bike. At this point you know you are headed toward that day, a turning point if you will in the process of a rebuild. This is when parts start going back on. It took weeks, months and years to get to this point.

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[[File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build1.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build2.jpeg|center|700px]]

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build3.jpeg|center|700px]]

Trying out the exhaust here with zipties to see who they will look. I like them!

[[File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|link=File:Stolen4-initial-build4.jpeg|center|700px]]

The downside is that every day you work on the bike is another day you ugly it up with all the required shit the bikes needs to run. Intake, airbox, radiator, wiring harness. It all adds up but these things are needed!
</center>
==Rolled out to see the light of day 03/2026==

With me running off for a few weeks for springbreak, I took the opertunity to get the bike rolling and activated the front braking system so that I can safely transport the bike to the Silas at Revenant Auto to fabricate the exhaust system for the bike.

It was very nice to see the bike in the daylight allbeit without all the ugly parts on it (airbox, wiring, radiator and cooling). Excuse the orange tow straps on the fork, this was just before loading to go.

[[File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-outside.jpeg|center|700px]]

==All the ugly bits go back on 05/2026==

Once the bike came back from having the exhaust built sadly, as with all my builds I get to see them all pretty without the wires, tubes and plastic bits that actually make these things run. It is just part of life that you have to accept uglying up these things but I always try to hide as much as possible!

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[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
I always use samco cooling tubes on my bikes as they run the bike a lot cooler. In the US. Blue and Red are the most common but on this bike, I special ordered white from the UK and waited three months for them to arrive! Worth the wait I think. Please excuse the OEM gauge cluster, I ran these just to make sure they bike is running an healthy before installing the motogadget cluster.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
You can start to see how many systems go into running these bikes. Essentially shit everywhere but impressive to see how Ducati stuffed so much under the hollow tank that monsters run.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
I decided to run a Chinese radiator again on this bike as it has more cooling area and honestly, looks cooler than OEM (pun intended...)

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
The ST4s oil cooler is my favorite choice for these bikes but I do wish they were painted silver, not black.

[[File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-UglyBits-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
I don't think there is anything better than Ducati, Ohlins, Brembo, no belt covers, open clutch.
</center>
==Out in real life, running and ready to be tested 06/2026==
One of the biggest days in all of my builds is the day I get to ride or drive the thing I have been working on for far too long. The day before I did my first ride on this bike in '''EIGHTEEN YEARS''' Ledger spotted me getting ready and made sure all was well. It is his bike so it is only naturally for him to get on it first!

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[[File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-Loo-Approves.jpeg|center|700px]]
Ledger is tall for his age but this also shows how little Monsters are! Most think that the 851 / 888 racing saved Ducati. They are wrong, the 851 / 888 platform did change the reputation of Ducati in the industry but it was the Monster, based on the 888 saved Ducati because they sold so many of them!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
Again, please excuse the OEM gauges, they are awful but allowed me to make sure the bike is running and reporting correctly before swapping gauges. Additionally the LED headlights work very well and look cool but to my old man eyes, they look funny!

[[File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-road-testing-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
This Monster has a great ass and the wire wheels make it pop even more! Also this view allows you to see the frame as you should, Ducati covered the latter half of the frame for some reason, I always run them naked.

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Upon first run I was very happy with the sound from my exhaust mash up. The shorty M1100S pipes on a Term Spaghetti is a perfect match.
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==Gauge Cluster design / build 07/2026==

As you have heard me say and have seen, the original gauge cluster on these bikes was made to hide behind, they usually had a little bikini fairing in front of them and with OEM riser bars, they looked OK. When you put clipons bars on these bikes, all the sudden '''ALL''' you see is the fucking cluster and therefore, it has to go.

Lets be honest, I was never going to keep the OEM cluster on this bike...

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[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
As you can see, this design will play well with keeping the lines of the bike uninterrupted, something the originals did '''not''' do.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-mock-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
While I was mocking this up I kept saying this is going to be a bitch to cut and sure enough, it was! More on that in a bit.
fab

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
To kick this off I had to cut the outer rim first to get he curve I was looking for.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
It's always fun cutting something and working 5 moves ahead to get where you need to be with a part.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-3.jpeg|center|700px]]
It is very old school to work with cardboard but it is all I know and I rather like the phases it allows me to see a part in.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-4.jpeg|center|700px]]
Starting to see the part we are aiming for here.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-5.jpeg|center|700px]]
When the part takes shape like it has here, you start being more careful. Up until now, I could "just make another" if I messed up but at this point I have made two parts, one in the trash and I would like to keep going!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-8.jpeg|center|700px]]
Once the part is complete we face it to make her pretty!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-7.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up is the effort to hid all the shit and look cool. Having a break lets me do things like these bends much more easily.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-6.jpeg|center|700px]]
Making the part was very easy, turning out just as I was hoping.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-9.jpeg|center|700px]]
Every time I make a part like this is 50% luck and 50% skill but every now and again I even surprise myself!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-10.jpeg|center|700px]]
I wanted this cover to swing down to the the light but I knew it would be too deep, a lot of material was cut off the final part, pictures on this later.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-fab-11.jpeg|center|700px]]
Next up, installing on the bike and trying to make all the wires fit.
</center>

==Gauge Cluster install 07/2026==
When it comes to reworking these harnesses I always try NOT to cut into the OEM bike side harness and I am always willing to hack into a gauge side harness. This allows future fixes / changes / restoration of original gear.

In order to get this thing installed I had to chop it up a tad to clear the headlight bucket, doing so I decided to make it a bit jagged so that the shroud looks like an animal of some sort. These are the little things that I do which no one likes until I do them and they see it. THEN THEY LIKE IT.... GO Figure.

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[[File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-hardness.jpeg|center|700px]]
Here you can simply see there is a lot of shit and not much space to deal with it in, from 10,000 feet it is easy to say, "This is never gonna work". This was a dry run for functionality, the final product is plush!

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-1.jpeg|center|700px]]
After a lot of doing, redoing, redoing, testing left to right and all controls / gauge functionality you can get things moving in the direction you want.

[[File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|link=File:StolenS4-guage-install-2.jpeg|center|700px]]
Overall I am very happy with the outcome here. My goal was to have a single cluster that was low and not in the profile line of the bike.
</center>
I hope people can accept the gauge function button being installed in plain sight. Usually I highjack the horn button for this but on this bike the polarity if this button is different and I therefore had to add a manual button, accessible by the left hand.

Next is to clean it, take proper pictures and get some ride time on it.

==Specifications==
Frame: 2001 Monster S4
Engine: Monster S4 916, No flywheel, Power Commander
Tank: 2006 Monster S4RS
Front Suspension: Ducati 1198 Ohlins SBK fork with 100MM radial mount. SpeedyMoto billet triples
Rear Suspension: Ducati ST4S Ohlins
Steering Damper: Ducati Monster Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 1098 monoblock calipers / Brembo Supersport Floating rotors (6 bolt).
Rear Brakes: Ducati MS4 Master / Ducati Monster 695 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / Evo Slave / Ducati 748R Ramp slipper, aluminum basket and pressure plate
Wheels: Ducati Sport Classic Wire wheels
Exhaust: Ducati Monster S4 Speghetti headers modded for low mount, Monster 1100S termi cans

==Colors==
Frame: Prismatic powders Navaja Nugget
Swingarm / Rearsets / headlight ring: Prismatic powders Porsche silver with Clear
Suspension Link / Calipers : prismatic powders RAL 1003
Body: 1936 Ford Motor Washington Blue

Motos

2026-07-30T01:53:25Z

Db: /* Personal Collection */

Motos

2026-07-30T01:53:05Z

Db: /* BritDuc */

Motos

2026-07-30T01:52:07Z

Db: /* Personal Collection */