BRITDUC

The 1997 Ducati 916SPS is a unicorn

Every bike has a story...

As some might know, the 916SPS was the first 916 with an 996 motor and was homogenized for the SBK race series of the day. Ducati sold most of these bikes to race teams but few were sold to private entities, this bike was one of said few. When I was getting into Ducati's there was a fellow in my town that was racing Ducati's at LRRS in NH (the series I later ran in) and he would have his bike serviced at a friends shop which I would frequent. On a few occasions I would see his 1996 916 and later his 1997 916SPS and would essentially sit and start at the bike.

Much like the 851Special, this gent became a friend and the bike later came to my shop for a possible rebuild that I never had the time to do. Over the years I figured this fellow had these bikes still stashed somewhere and that old itch came back and would not leave me alone. Much of this was that it was fun to build the 851special because it was owned by a friend, this bike carried that same story and they both were in my shop together 15 years before but both were neglected by me as my priorities changed.

One day I was at my Mother's home and was chatting with another old friend who was there looking over some house project's he had been hired to tackle. In passing I asked if he had any new projects, knowing this gent is always playing with old cars and bikes and he said: "no much really, I do have a few old Ducati's I am playing with". I looked at him and told him whos they were and what they were and he was struck by my connecting the dots. He had bartered contracting work with the original owner (my old friend) for the bikes toward contracting work. After a few minutes of laughing, I told him he should sell me the SPS, because no one else in their right mind would ever want it.

Like the 851, a year passed of me pestering him on selling me the SPS and finally he gave in, knowing I was the only dumbass in the world that would want such a neglected old racebike. I paid him more than the bike was worth in parts and we moved it over to my shop, where once in private I said: "what the hell is wrong with me"

Here are the 916s when I first went to see them:

This pic makes these bikes look a LOT better than they were. Once home, My son Ledger didn't waste a second to hop on her and give a big smile, at least someone was happy!!

The first thing you do is getting it running!

After replacing the tank on the bike, including a new pump / filter unit, this bike started right up (it helped that it was stored for 30 years with race gas!). Once she got upto temp (or so I hoped, I started adding water to the cooling system, only to find a freeze plug was blown... For anyone out there that has worked on old stuff, this is a kiss of death. A blown freeze plug means the bike has frozen and likely didn't have antifreeze in it (as a racebike it was not allowed to have antifreeze in it!). To make matters worse, the bike ended up with water in the oil.

After my run tests, I stoped trying to shore up the motor and moved on. Full motor build is on deck....

She sure sounded good for sitting for 30 years!! Nothing is better than 1000CC running through a full 50MM race exhaust.

Teardown

The teardown process is fun, you never know what you are going to find from Ducati on these pre 2000 bikes (as mentioned on the 851Special). You also see all the bad news!! This bike had a lot of it.

A short list of issues found:

• Dented frame from clipons hitting
• Scraped swingarm from racetrack crash
• Failed metal in the tank
• Exhaust mid pipe dented from rearset tabs bending from a race crash.
• As mentioned above, water in the oil so we have a crack in a head, a jug or both!
• A shit ton more.

As you can see, the motor was covered in fuel from the tank failing.

This motor has about 300 miles on it, sure does not look it!!

Here the engine is outside getting degreased, man it was a mess! The tank had race fuel in it, leaking down onto the engine's clearcoat it just turned to a nasty brown muck.

The tail of two frames and a great looking swingarm

As mentioned, this SPS was never titled, only a certificate of origin which meant I was never going to be able to register it. Because of this, I didnt waste time trying, I sourced a new 2001 996 mono frame. While I was at it, I decided to really shoot myself in the eye and do a monster single sided swingarm conversion like I had on the Docr.

Making the Monster Swingarm work on the SBK frame is a lot of work. First you need to trim the width of the forged pivot of the swingarm.

From there you then need to make a rocker that allows the SBK frame rocker position to align with the monster shock and link mounts. This is no small feat and most who do these conversions don't even try, they just cut and weld the SBK frame to fit, I prefer to keep the frame as it was from the Italians. Here you can see the rocker from the DocR (right) that I then went ahead and copied (left). This rocker runs the same exact spring rates because it uses the same dimensions as the OEM rocker, simple shifting the mounting positions and sandwiching all the elements to make a very strong (better than OEM) setup.

It was fun to remake a piece I designed and made 15 years earlier, I remembered very little of it but was able to pull it off. Remember, I machine parts like an idiot, by hand not by computer but I think this goes well with the Italian way of building these bikes back in the day, a little of this and a little of that works just write.