Super Monster

SUPER MONSTER

PRO ITALIA’S BEAUTY OF A BEAST

STEVE ANDERSON

BARRUPPP! YOU THUNDHR AWAY FROM A LIGHT, TRYING hard to keep your good-citizen badge (and license), but the front wheel ignores your noble intentions, rising so high and so quickly you have to chop the throttle. You thumb a signal and flick the bike left onto a side street, marveling at the ease with which you achieve a silly lean angle. Still heeled over, you accelerate out of the right-angle bend-and the front end lifts again in a crossed-up wheelie just like a 500cc GP bike exiting that last, slow corner at Laguna Seca. You let out a long, slow breath; the Ducati test riders got it right when they dubbed this bike II Monstro.

And Pro Italia, the Glendale, California, Ducati shop, certainly knows how to enhance that monstrous character. This particular M900 carries enough accessories and options to nearly match its purchase price; they make for a more beastly Monster, even if the total cost will leave most motorcyclists shaking their heads in disbelief.

The most successful mods begin with the wheels, tires and suspension. Ducati cut a few comers here, but Pro Italia’s Earl Campbell uncut them, and then some. He replaced the standard, non-adjustable Showa front fork with the adjustable version from a 900SS. Cost? About $700 per leg. A $660 WP shock took the place of the stock Showa unit. A real magnesium Marvic wheel shaved 4 pounds from the weight of the similarly sized aluminum front wheel, while a rear Marvic saved another 6 pounds; that’s a vital 10 pounds from unsprung weight at $145 per pound. Metzeler’s new Z1 steel-belted radiais replaced Michelins, while a WP steering damper ($380) puts the quash on any wobbles. Bumps no longer pound harshly through the M900’s front fork, and the steering damper and new tires slow down the standard machine’s steering, which can sometimes be as quick as that of a 10-speed Schwinn. Now it seems like a good dirtbike, planted, solid and tossable, with traction to spare. You can almost feel this modified Monster reach up and tum off your forebrain, hear it whisper: “Just do it.’’ Soon enough, you’re trying power slides and wheelies and insane lean angles.

The bike’s light weight contributes to that feeling; this modified Monster weighs only 413 pounds with a full tank of gas, 385 pounds dry. There are big dual-purpose Singles that aren’t much lighter. Signs of its diet are readily apparent. Custom carbon-fiber fabrications replace the stock cam-belt and clutch covers, the front fender and the rear sub-fender ($759 in total). The Europeanmandated and gross-looking main rear fender has been ditched. Two feathery webs of CNC-machined aluminum billet carry new footpegs and a custom aluminum sidestand; the $690 kit mounts the footpegs half an inch forward of stock for comfort, chops 7 pounds from the motorcycle and eliminates the passenger pegs.

Other changes you have to look harder to see; instead of wearing the standard stainless-steelbrake rotors, this Monster carries cast-iron units from a new Italian company called Braking. At $774 for the three, they’re roughly $200 less expensive than Brembo iron rotors. They work with Kevlar-reinforced pads and stiff new brake lines to stop the Monster about as abruptly as an F-14 slamming down on an aircraft carrier deck.

A relatively light pull on the solid-feeling frontbrake lever levitates the back wheel even at highway speed; fortunately the brake’s feel matches its power. For all the good the easily controllable rear brake does with its tire floating high during straight-line stops, Campbell could have chucked the entire rear-brake assembly and saved another 7 pounds.

Pushing deep into the range of wretched excess are the $1000 of engine modifications. A standard M900 runs a 9.2:1 compression ratio; Campbell performed a pistonectomy, with the replacement parts boosting compression all the way to 10.5:1. Joining the stock pistons in the scrap heap are the standard Mikuni CV carburetors, replaced by 39mm Keihin flat-slide carbs ($720). The two-valve Ducati engine can’t take significantly more valve timing without its big valves bumping into each other, so Campbell has elected to install “torque” cams from the Australian company Vee Two, which increase lift substantially without

a similar increase in duration. Australian Staintune all-stainless slip-on mufflers ($479) replaced the Ducati oval cans. And as a final touch, Campbell, worrying that any power increase would make an already wheelie-prone Monster too difficult to ride, installed a one-tooth smaller sprocket. That’s about like giving an alcoholic only a small glass along with his fifth of scotch.

There’s no choke on the Ducati’s Keihins, but there are accelerator pumps. A few quick twists of the throttle and a push of the starter button fires it off; you have to twitch the throttle-and the accelerator pumps-for the first 30 seconds or so until you can ride away. At idle, the exposed dry clutch hums a high note; pull it in and it rattles like a garbage disposal eating a serving spoon. The new mufflers don’t, or at least not much; the revised exhaust note is muscular enough to strain neighborly relations as you head off on an early-Sunday-moming ride.

The slide-throttle carburetors and high-compression give the engine instant response in the meaty heart of its powerband; even with the taller gearing the front wheel comes up almost too quickly in first gear. But as the bike was first delivered to Cycle World, it was actually down on peak power from a stocker, 72 horsepower to 76, and-despite its 20-some-pound weight loss-turned only an 11.81-second,

112-mph quarter-mile to a Stocker's 11.90-second, 112-mph run. The power loss was traced to a loose cam pulley, which once corrected brought peak power to 85, a 9-horsepower increase. Quarter-mile time dropped to 11.33 at 119 mph.

With full power restored, the M900 was more the wheelie monster than ever-but not an uncivil one. The twistgrip opened the carburetors’ slides against lighter return springs and with less effort than for any Dell’Orto-equipped Duck. Only when lugging the engine in a higher gear did you have to be careful how quickly you snapped the throttle open; too fast and the slide-throttle carburetors reverted to type, stuttering until you closed them slightly. The Monster cruised down the highway smoothly, yet could still power down a backroad as quickly as a pure sportbike.

The final piece of the Pro Italia customization was the black paint job with scalloped red pinstripes and an angry Superduck on the fuel tank. While there are riders

who might prefer something, well, a little more subtle, the customized Monster elicited more thumbsup gestures from car and pickup drivers than any bike that’s recently visited the magazine. And the paint certainly matches the bike’s exuberant character.

In the end, no cold-

eyed accountant could ever justify the modified Monster. It’s really only incrementally better than a standard M900, at an increased cost of almost $9000. Not exactly value for your money, unless of course you care more about pulling effortless crossed-up wheelies from slow comers, need a streetbike that feels like a good motocrosser, and want everyone to surround your bike when you pull into the local hang-out.

If that describes you, good luck on keeping your license. □