While I've been not riding my bike due to injury, I've had a lot of time to ponder the eternal "what bike will I get when I pass my test?" question. its silly really, I cant afford the lessons at the mo, never mind a new bike, but its a fun game to play!

I've kinda "decided" that when the time comes, and a bit of money comes my way early next year, that i'd quite like a ducati monster. While I was buying a helmet and gloves today there was one on sale outside the shop, an 800ie, so I had a quick sit astride it. I liked it. I think an 800ie is probably a little much to start with but i couldnt resist trying it for size anyway. One thing that really stood out was how heavy the clutch lever felt to pull in - so much so that I went and tried the one one a kawasaki 1000cc something next to it, to find that the bigger bikes clutch was much lighter!

are monsters / ducatis known for heavy clutches or was that just something wrong with that particular bike?

only thing wrong with it is its a duke...

only joshin mate.. yeah the clutch will be heavy for a couple of reasons i guess, 1 its a new bike, 2 its a dry clutch (dont ask).. and 3... ....

it was a 2004 bike actually with 6700 miles on it. so is it gonna be because of the dry clutch thing? does that mean they're all like that? I suppose I might get used to it. It was a really really nice bike, sitting on it confirmed that I want a monster at some point in my life! I just kinda felt at home on it, ya know? Course I might change my mind if i ever ride one

i'm not a ducati expert but i think the 800 has a wet clutch (dry on the 1000) but it is hydraulic which normally means that it feels very heavy at the lever. my ZX7R has a hydraulic clutch and i got used to it very quickly.

yep just found the advert for it, its a wet clutch it says. must be the hydraulic thing then.

here it is: http://atsearch.autotrader.co.uk/www/bikes...200742296760249

I should stop dreaming methinks! Still its something to aim for at least, an incentive to sort my life out, get on top of finances, and retake the bloody test. I'm starting to get there, slowly! That particular one is bound to be gone by the time I have the means and license of course.

just read your other thread, is it your left wrist that you broke, if it is could that be why it seems heavy. sounds like a nasty injury that has taken a long time to heal.

oh no thats the thing, its the other wrist I broke.

never stop dreaming, its what drives people to better themselves, biking imo is a purely aspirational occupation and you are always dreaming of what bike you want next, i can't open the pages of a bike mag without thinking about changing my bikes at least 3 times before i put it back down.

the monster is a good looking piece of kit and is a very good carrot to dangle for the future.

Sorry to pee on ya chips but I

I don't like Ducati to me its like the equivalent to a Volvo look at that bike it looks so un-cool, what are those scaffolding tubes on the side,, the sound of the engine is like a ball bearing in a biscuit tin. I’m not sure what ppl see in them. The question is why?.

as i said, aspirational, its just that you aspire to something else, every persons carrot is different.

Well that explains Fox's chips!

Scouse have you ever ridden a Monster? They do add up to a lot more than the sum of their parts.

Me, I quite like them. Ducatis always polarise views though. Good job really or we'd a right bunch of clones!

I spose its like the VW Beetle love them or hate them.

They should call it the marmite!

beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess! I personally like the way they look. I am a fan of "form follows function" designs and I think the monster fits that. I like sportsbikes too, but the appeal of a monster is its a bike that i like which at the same time doesnt seem so intimidating, while still being to my eyes a thing of beauty, in a mechanical kinda of way. And having paid attention to a lot of bikes recently I've come to the conclusion I love the sound of a V twin too. i also found when trying various cars in the past I always tended to prefer the torquier engines over the high revving higher bhp ones.

the thing about monsters to me is, "I just like them" and I cant put my finger on why. that in itself gives them a certain appeal, maybe its because I want to find out why? thinking about it, the no nonsense look of them is kinda the appealing thing.

initially when I got into biking I had my sights set on sportsbikes for similar reasons. but as I learned about them (and sat on some too) I started realising my dream wasnt all its cracked up to be. I'm not even sure I even want one at all now, although I wont rule it out till I've tried one (further along the line anwyay methinks).

hehe, I love beetles, but I'd never own one!

Now you see, I hate beetles, mainly because I have owned one.

However I do like Marmite

Hey each to their own.

I like the look of a ducati monster but hate the sound of the monster!
If you know what I mean?
Never ridden one though so will be watching this space!

Ah now you're complicating this.

I suppose you only like Marmite on toast and not in sandwiches!

Unless with cheese! Welsh mature Cheddar!

Well, I absolutely love Ducatis. Stop & look at them in the street when they're parked up, catch them up/ slow down for them just to listen to them. When I start to daydream about bikes, they got "Ducati" written on them and they're red; and they sound like loads of nuts & bolts in a washing machine just before you gun them away into the sunset. They're that kind of bike.

Seriously doubt I'll ever own one though- my bike has to be functional... *all* the time!

Ducatis tend to have heavy clutches. One of the revisions for the year mine came out was to make the clutch action lighter, but it's still pretty heavy... Also, have a look at the servicing costs. You can do them yourself if you take a bit of time over it, but if you want to put it into a dealer it's not cheap...

Some people love them, and some people hate them. I like having something a little unconventional, and properly noisy. Shoundn't be as clanky as the dry-clutch models - my clutch sounds like a disaster when it's worn...

Billy's just grumpy because I told him there was nothing "different" about his 'Blade. I'll still stand by that. I'm sure it's a great bike, but inline-4, aluminium frame, 4-1 exhaust, USD forks, double swingarm... Pretty-much the same as every other Japanese bike out there

As for Scouse, the trellis-tube steel frame does actually serve a purpose. It's firm, but flexes in a way that's very hard for cast aluminium to do. Makes the bike feel "right". After all, a few dozen WSB wins can't go far wrong

If you want it, get it

What, you mean reliable and smooth and you arrive at your destination with the same number of parts on the bike as when you left home?

Maybe Billy'd be more grumpy if he had a Ducati, rather than a superb Blade?

hmm reliability is something that crossed my mind. Are they really THAT bad? The press seem to say that ducatis are getting better reliability wise, and the latest ones arent like the old ones were, but then they continue to say that about alfa romeo cars, and i had one of those new a few years back (when they were also saying alfas aren't unreliable any more like the alfas of old, and within a week the paint rubbed off the edge of the bootlid because it was rubbing on the bodywork when it closed. Good job it was a company car eh?

So are ducatis similar? mags etc say they are better than they were but in reality they aren't, its just that brand new ones don't completely fall apart for a couple of years so they can say that?

Why is Billy getting dragged into this? Its not my fault that i was wise enough to invest my pennies in the mighty Fireblade
Ive really heard it all now....you dont want a Blade ...too reliable those mate
Ducati's had a reputation a few years back for dodgy electric's, but that dosent seem to be a problem anymore. but its harder to get rid of a bad rep than it is to get a good one
The Doc has a duke monster...he's probably the best one to ask about it.

What Billy said... with one proviso:
Ducati owners are absolutely the best people to advise you on the merits of their bikes, but please consider the possibility that they make some allowances for "character" to feed a passion for the brand.

BTW, a good mate of mine was a manager in Alfa's quality control in Italy and the short version from him was:
Don't *ever* buy an Alfa with your own money.

Ducatis have had a whole catalogue of problems in the past. Right through the '90s they were plauged with bad electrics, alternators falling to bits, overheating rectifiers catching fire and stuff like that. Even bikes the same age as mine (Y-plate) are suspect for chrome flaking on the valve rockers. They're a whole world different to the "days of yore" when you'd be lucky to get one home. I've had mine out in the pissing rain, and it's been fine. My only problem was a kinked fuel hose causing starting problems. Oh, and a dud battery that I flattened with the alarm.

Hondas are blessed with brilliant engineering and just run and run. The Blade's a great bike (just in case anyone's picking me up wrongly) - if it wasn't a great bike, Honda wouldn't put FireBlade on the side of it. It's just nice to have something different.

To my mind, the worst bit of a Ducati are the servicing costs - they're more crippling than the riding position!

you keep claiming that your bike is something different, but im not sure what you mean by that. are you saying that its different because its unreliable, or different because its a Ducati and its got Italian styling?.. Im not even sure that their road bike's deserve superbike status

I think what Defiler is hinting at is that the world and his son own a Blade. Personally i think that about R1's.

You can't seem to go anywhere round here without seeing a Blue R1 round most corners. ...........














(or is that guy just stalking me)

How can you say that?!!!!!!!!!!!!

That trellis frame is just soooooooooooooo sexy!

You seen the new Monster 696? Looks cool as hell although the trellis does remind me of the Forth Railway Bridge... Maybe if it wasn't red?!

The Lattice on the Ducati's always reminds me of this now thats not sexy

Every time we go to Foxs and riders turn up on a Ducati every one goes whats that noise! oh its the Ducati.

if you like it that sort of bike thats fine I don't see the appeal.

my oh my what have I started

Not quite, on either count. What I mean is thet everything on the FireBlade / R1 / GSXR-1000 / ZX-10R is really conventional. There's been no risk, and little innovation. I'm not trying to suggest in any way that any of these bikes are bad, but they've just gone the same route as everyone else, and honed things in just a little bit more than the last version.

To my mind, the real value in engineering is found in stepping back from the problem and trying to see if there's a better way. Why reinvent the wheel, you might ask? Well, because next time you'll get caterpillar tracks, or some such. Constant refinement of existing methods works well, up to a point, but sometimes you just have to throw everything away and see if there's another route worth taking. And usually there is.

I expect my opinion is coloured by coming from a computery background. Computing history is littered with ideas that have been honed and tuned, and worked well up to a point. Eventually, though, someone's taken a different approach and left the "tried and true" method in the dust.

Call me the underdog, but I just like to see things done differently

Thats rot mate, how can you even start to think that these bikes are conventional, they are bike engineering at its best.4 classic bike's that will be know throughout the rest of bike making history as benchmarks.. and thats what progress engineering is all about, designing, trying and adapting to be better. and i never get that phrase..."reinvent the wheel". what is that supposed to mean?. re-engineering the wheel and how its driven is what its all about

Hehe - well, I guess we'll have to differ over this one. If engineering just kept on the same path and refined it a bit at each step, we'd all have steam-powered motorcycles. But by now they'd be really *good* steam-powered bikes

Sometimes engineers have to go out on a limb to make things better. The Bimota Tesi with its centre-hub steering, for example, was an improvement over forks for steering under braking. Okay, it's too expensive, and doesn't give a justifiable advantage over upside-down forks, but they *tried*, and I applaud that. Ducati had much more success with Desmodronic valves, which allow you to profile the valves much more precisely at all speeds. Again, it's been quite expensive, but on the track it's proven itself again and again. The Norton F1 popped a Wankel engine into a bike - great power-to-weight ratio, but a shame it apparently leaked oil something awful. Smooth and revvy though.

History is littered with "great" ideas that didn't work out, and with 20:20 hindsight it's easy to look back and laugh at some of the dead-ends that were taken. But unless someone actually takes the risk and follows one of these new ideas, you never know if it'll be the next big thing. The FireBlade treads the proven path, but the old Honda NR750 took the time to try something new. It's not that Honda *can't* do it, but that they won't.

Enjoying this, am I.

Which particular motorcycle, when released in 1992, totally redefined the "sports bike" and forced *all* other manufacturers to play catch up for a good few years?

When something works as well as a wheel, it doesn't really need frequent reinvention.

"that will have been the Fireblade", he says to Base, as Base stokes the fire.....




oh yeah, near forgot what i was gonna post, dont think centre hub steering was a ducati invention...it goes way back to the 1920...maybe they re-Invented it ....

Didn't the 916 make it's first appearance at shows in 1992?

I know, I know - Ive spoken ill of the FireBlade, and invoked Jihad. I've never once said that the 'Blade is a bad bike. I'm just saying that there's no single part that differentiates it from other bikes. At all. Luckily the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, or it'd just be another Divvie!

Okay, you might regard the FireBlade as a trailblazer then - the bike that set the mould for others to follow. But surely that accolade should go to the old GSXR-1100 from 1986. The '92 Blade gained upside-down forks, but had less power and more weight... What Honda *did* do spectacularly is make a 900 turn like a 600. Now they all do. It used to be the case (as you rightly say) in 1992 that if you wanted a fast hellraiser of a bike, you had one choice. Now every manufacturer has one, and there's really nothing to slip between them, in performance *or* technology.

For what's supposed to be a cutting-edge, flagship bike, it's surprisingly lacking in "out-there" kit. Even if they took some established technology that's purely Honda and shoved it in there to give it a solid edge? Maybe? Seomething that's been in Honda sports-cars for years? Something that's been shoved into the VFR already? Something tried, tested and proven? Perhaps slip a little VTEC in there or *something*. It would differentiate it from the herd of litre-class sportsbikes...



Never said it was. I believe you could be right about the '20s, but I don't believe it was made to work well until the Bimota Tesi D1.

may well have done Rone, but didnt go into limited production untill 1993...and mass production in 1994..however, there was this..............

1992 CBR900RR

At 454.2 lb and putting out approximately 124 horsepower from its inline 4 cylinder engine, the original Fireblade defined a new genre - big displacement bikes that were as light as, if not lighter than, their 600 cc counterparts.

The first 893 cc Blade sold quickly, even with a relatively high list price of £7390. Demand soon out stripped supply, as riders could not believe just how fast, light weight, a class breaking 185 kg and easy to ride this new bike was, especially in the hands of rider's more used to the heavy weight bikes of the time, eg: Kawasaki ZX10, Suzuki GSX-R1100, and Honda's own CBR1000F.

It was widely regarded as one of the best-handling sport bikes ever although there were some calls for a steering damper initially due to the 16-inch front wheel making the front seem twitchy. It was soon proven to be the correct choice of wheel, as the reduced unsprung weight of a 16-inch wheel over a 17-inch improved turning ability. The steering geometry was also virtually identical to the Kawasaki KR1-s 250 cc two stroke which although a road going bike was widely used for racing and was known as a 'proddie bike for the road'. The Fireblade's statistics on paper raised a few eyebrows before launch because of this. The bike was tested with help by Phillip McCallen, a professional racer who also raced the Fireblade at the Isle of Man TT.

The first colors were red/white/blue and the menacing black and silver version.

Over the next few years, the Fireblade saw some minor updates as the bike received some new clothes in the shape of a redesign to the bodywork, as the now familiar Foxeye/Urban Tiger came along in December 1993, and soon sold out, as it had the year before, even at the list price of £8195.

Maybe 1909? Neracar.

I've actually ridden one of these beauties.

What you saying then Billy
Mine is a MAGNERS I do like the Blade

yeah mate, it was the neracar i was thinking off, didnt get my dates right though.....

I like Blades, I remember the first time I saw one in a showroom down in Ayr. It was like WHOA! What the hell is that and how do I get one?! It was the width of it that struck me first.
Helluva bike, even in the ropey tiger paintjob and the matching one-piece leathers
I'd have one certainly if it didn't scare the p!ss outta me

In saying that, I liked the 916 better... sorry

Im trying to dispute what the big mans saying Mr Pie, and i think im getting my point across if he would only read what hes writing...
Honda with the fireblade were at the fore of bike inovation...Its not a my bikes better than your senario. its been fun finding out the facts and figures though

maybe we shouldnt have hijack the original thread....but who cares...cos im a Pirate...

916 is a great bike Ronz, near had one myself. couldnt make my mind up between that and the 749 Dark, in the end i missed out on both.


but i'd rather slip on a banana skin than be seen dead on a Hornet.....

What can I say? I'm just expressing an opinion. There seems to be a kind of hysterical devotion surrounding the FireBlade in certain biking circles (and I'm not accusing anyone here of this), but I just don't get it. Sure, in 1992 it did things a little differently, but as I say, the power was down and the weight was up on the GSXR1100 of 8 years before - they changed the steering geometry and made the front wheel smaller...

It just strikes me that for a bike that's supposed to be on the cutting edge, it does things exactly the same way as all the other "cutting edge" bikes out of Japan. I'd just expect that all of these manufacturers would be trying anything in their powers to get an edge on the competition. The MV Agusta F4 has a radial valve arrangement designed by Ferrari, for example. The Ducati Desmosedici retains the trademark Ducati Desmodronic valves (that served them well in the Superbikes and MotoGP). Triumph no longer seem to have a litre-class racing bike, but they have the triple-cylinder 675 - at least they're trying something different to everyone else. Bimota's Tesi 2D has the centre-hub steering (from 1909), but they're trying to push in a different direction.

At least Suzuki's 2007 MotoGP bike had electromechanical valves (I believe), which would be cool to see on a road bike once the rough edges are smoothed out.

As I say, Honda could slap in some VTEC, and it would be different to the herd. It would be a unique selling point. As it is, if I'm in the market for a litre-class sports bike, I don't see why I should consider a FireBlade over anything else. They're all the bloody same!

Anyway, I'm not in the market for a litre-bike, so it's a moot point I guess.

Oh, and yes - the 916 was launched in 1993 so as to be homologated for the WSB. And it was stupidly expensive! And unreliable... But pretty



Umm - Yarrr!

oh i give up...your just not reading the whats being said to you....

I am. How can I explain my point of view simply and concisely, because you just don't seem to see what I'm talking about. It's like they've put in 95% effort in the FireBlade, just enough to match everyone else, but are holding back the other 5%. I'd just love to see what they could do with it if they just went flat out, balls-to-the-wall, and threw everything they had at it.

Maybe it'd be easier just to say "yeah - the FireBlade is the best bike it's possible to build for the road, unsurpassed in every regard - the cutting edge of motorcycle technology". Do you believe that?

Say with a beautiful, laconic Italian accent:
"You use your head when you'a take the Blade; but you listen to the heart when you choose Ducati."