888LTD

A Rare bird in need of attention

My first DesmoQuattro was a 1993 888 SP0. I promptly put staintune pipes on it and drove it as hard as I could. In doing so I also blew a belt on a cold day and had to completely rebuild the motor. I was 22 years old and was fairly fearless. While the bike was apart I decided to do some drop in performance upgrades. I called Earlnado and asked him about the 12.5:1 FBF units he had. He suggested them as the bike gets much nastier up top. So it began.

During this time, I was trying to get the Doc to stop buying american iron. He was on his second Harley powered machine and I was starting to fear for his and Woodman's lives. As many of my friends will tell you, I am a very bad influence. I am also very good at digging on the net. As per my normal fashion, I started sending Wally links to craigslist ads. As it was, 888s were getting more and more rare. This was around 2006 and I was only able to find one or two anywhere in the world for sale.

After a few months, the perfect machine popped up in Washington DC. Better yet, it was a 1994 LTD, the last of the last.

Doc and Woodman went to the back, then to Uhaul, then to DC. What they returned with was a very nice looking, completely stock 888LTD #84 with about 6000 ticks on the clock. This was around the time I started racing so when I got on the bike I was shocked with the lack of suspension and braking this thing had on the front end. Getting off a race setup bike and getting a street machine usually makes a bike seem like a Laz-ee-boy but in this case it was more like a wet noodle.

Specifications

Frame and subframe: 1994 888 frame, 1994 888 mono subframe
Engine: 1992 851, punched to 888, 748 close ratio transmission, steel ibeam rods, 12.5:1 FBF pistons, chipped by FBF.  Original Motor in storage. 
Tank: 1994 888
Front suspension: Ohlins 100MM radial mount custom made, GSX-R tops, 917 lowers, OEM triples
Rear Suspension: OEM Ducati 888 Ohlins
Front Brakes: Brembo Radial master / Ducati 999 100MM monoblock calipers / 748R/996R 15MM offset rotors.
Steering Damper: Storez
Rear Brakes: Ducati 999 Master / Ducati 999 rear caliper
Clutch: Brembo Radial master / YoYoDyne Slave
Wheels: Brembo 5 spoke aluminum
Exhaust: Termignoni full 50MM Spaghetti, carbon silencers
Tail: 1994 888 
Nose and side fairings: OEM 888

The Beginning of a long road

Right off the bat I suggested full floating rotors, woody clip ons and to rebuild the front end. The Doc decided to go a few steps past that. About a month later, I was handed a custom Ohlins R&T front end from a Suzuki 600 (top end) with 916 Lowers and radial mounts. Additionally he handed me a set of spanking Brembo Radial calipers, two Radial Masters and a set of woodies. Wholey $4k in one pop but man how to do things right! The reason for the custom R&T was because the Doc wanted to keep the stock triples with the LTD name badge. This also forced me to custom machine reservoir mounts.

I don't have shots of the original machine when we pulled it from the truck but here is the bike after it's first run through. As you can see, the bike has the LTD Carbon Fenders, Carbon Pipes and the Color matched rear suspension loop.

Why not put a race built motor in it?

We road the bike for a season in this form. It performed tip top and was nothing but fun for Doc and Woodman. We did have some issues tough. To start, one day Doc called me to inform me that he had a pool of oil under his bike. After inspection I found that the source was the starter. We took the left side cover off and found that one of the starter bolts had backed out and had caused the leak. While in there, I noticed that the timing jackshart had a broken tab. Looking for the piece more, I found it in one of the lower oil gallies. It seems someone in Italy was in a rush when they put this motor together. If your not careful when placing the left side cover on a water cooled bike, you can break off one of the jackshaft fingers with the water pump feed shaft.

We buttoned the bike back up but I mention to Wally that we would need to do some motor work to fix this. I always open my big mouth! I found an 851 motor and we decided to goto town on it rather then play around with the original 888 motor. We promptly bought the very same 12.5:1 Pistons I had in my bike, Alum Flywheel, new Belts and a few other bits. We sent the pistons and jugs to Millennium coatings for boring and coating. At the time of build we also oppted to go with a 748 close ratio transmission (just because I had all the time in the world and wanted to split the cases on this bike! not). We also took the chance to add an oil cooler to the bike as well as samco hoses.

Tear down and total rebuild

All built, we pulled the stock motor out of the 888 and placed in the new 888 Evil twin screamer. With a new Chip from FBF, we see major improvements in low, mid and high RPMS on this motor, happily spinning to 11K. What a motor. Once we put the bike back on the road we road her for a few months and then sent her to GMD Boston to have the numbers checked. I later received a call from Peter Kates that made my day go dark. This 888 was tucked in like none other!

I had just rebuilt this damn thing twice and now I was REALLY going to have to rebuild it. From this point on I started taking more pictures of the build.

This is the last time this thing looked stock for the rest of it's life. (aside from the 5 spokers I had just mounted on it)

This is just before teardown.

The early injection was a little complex. It works like a charm but when I say there are a lot of leads I am not even touching the surface.

Aqua Plumbing, Wiring, air ducting, Fuel plumbing. Lots of stuff!

Need I say more?

Wally Felt bad for me and bought a Lift, been saving my life ever since. Poor aching back!

Have you ever seen a Ducati Fly? Me neither....

When you tear these things down you are scared to see how little there is to them. From here I placed a set of old 888 Cases I had in the bike. When GMD gets the bike and puts it in the rack to straighten it, the first thing that happens is the engine cases crack (glad Peter warned me about this). Basically, Peter will put the bike in this big frame, Heat the shit ouf of the members and hydraulic jack the shit out of the bike until straight. When you get the bike back, you have a blackend pile of a thing that looks like it was in a fire. Off to MotoFAB at once!

Need I say More?

Miles is so good, you hand him a pile of shit and he gives it back to you looking like this:

This is the fun part of building bikes right here

The 888 and 851 are very lightly built. On all the new bikes, the frames are made with larger diameter, thicker walled tubing. This gives these bikes a certain feel at high speeds in the bends.

Miles had a color he calls Chrome Smoke. It is a color and then a clear over it. Glowing does not even cover how this stuff looked when I got it back.

Wheels were also powdered to match. SP5 Braking mount and tierod were added. Did I mention Corse Carbon RearSets?

Roll it out, Start it up! You can see the difference in the frame color. The Stock is more on the gold side then on the gun metal side. Additionally, I decided to match the front fairing support and subframe which are black when stock.

After checking all Fluid levels and taking a few rides on her we slap the covers back on her.

I still think this is one of the best looking Qwackers ever made by the gents in IT.

It is strange how they have run fron the fairing coming so close to the frontwheel.

You can eat off this thing.

Carbon Panels. GP shift.

Prowess

Spaghetti Dinner

The only thing left to do on this bike was to track down a Spaghetti exhaust for it. a Few years later and we found one! Stock on the right.

These boys know how to make a system. You be the judge. Stock on the Left.

This system is not only the headers but it is the cans as well.

Yummy!!!!! 50MM from front to back!

She has wings.

At this point this machine is pretty much done. She starts every time. Runs fast as hell, sounds better then anything else and looks better then anything else I have found. Let a man have his opinions.

New Ownership 10/2024

In the summer of 2024, like the DocR I was able to acquire the 888. Once I received it, I quickly realized that like the Doc, it was totally unsafe! The tires were ancient, it was running on a single cylinder, had no oil and no coolant in it. The bike needed some love.

Upon inspection, it seems the water pump cover on the bike had a leak (common on old water cooled bikes with original fiber based gasket) so the bike lost most of its water, good thing it had not been run. Additionally the radiator was showing signs of being old and in salt air. Pulling the entire system apart showed that I had a lot more work cut out for me.

Here she is up on the lift

As you can see in the below, the radiator is close to failure and the pump was covered in oxidized badness.

At this time the bike is back in one piece after doing a full service on it (belts, oils, plugs, so on. I have shipped out the radiator from the 851Special which was in better shape and had it rebuilt because finding an OEM radiator from the 1992-1994 851 / 888 is impossible. That will go on the 888 and the failing one will go into storage. Tires and a few other things will go on at the same time.

Maintenance log 10/2024

All Maintenance work listed here was after my purchase of the bike in the summer of 2024

Logging of work

Date	Description	New / Used parts	Notes
10/05/24	Coolant system flush	OEM radiator	Full flush of coolant system
10/05/24	thermostat	OEM used	Ducati St4
10/05/24	Water Pump clear / cover gasket	New	New Crush gasket, cleaning of all alleyways which were messy!
10/05/24	Oil service	New	Mobile1 / Athena filter
10/05/24	Belt service	New	Tru-Fit
10/19/24	Spark Plugs	New	NGK
10/05/24	Grips	New	Renthal