StolenS4

There is a story behind every bike I own 12/2025

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!)

Here was the bike in 2008 when it was in my possession still

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

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.

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 speghetti system with high mount Ti cans (Japan sourced, I have never seen these in the States, ever)
• 999 front and rear wheels
• 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!

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.

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

A little more extreme breakdown:

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.

Frontend build and mockup 10/2025

For this bike I thought the 1098 / 1199 Ohlins with radials would look cool, 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).

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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 1098 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.

The ST4S rear shock mounted well and the rez plumbing clears the frame the way I had hoped. Here you see the rebound adjuster

On the other side you see the compression adjust / rez with the line fitting well in the frame.

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.