After purchasing a beat up 2003 Ducati Supersport off of craigslist, I began cleaning it up and returning it to where it should be. After pulling the bike apart, I began cleaning out the mass amounts of grease, dirt, and aluminum alloy shavings from wear points on the bike. I polished the axles, cleaned the disk brakes up, new rear tire, stripped the paint from the gas tank and repainted it to a matte black. After pulling off the original headlight and front blinkers along with the front cage, I realized
that there wasn't even a chance of being able to use what came on the bike.
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Around that point is where I decided to not bother rebuilding the bike to how it would have looked out of the factory. Instead I chose to do what is commonly known as a street-fighter. I purchased a new front headlight that mounted directly to the forks instead of the frame and found a set of blinking that could be bolted straight to the plastic of the headlight and wired everything up. Of course nothing can be easy. In wiring the headlight, I ended up needing to rewiring about a third or more of the engine's wiring harness in order for it to fit into the new limited space of the frame compared to the spacious front cage from before.
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After that point in the build, I ran out of necessary things the bike needed and began my own basic artistic touch to the bike. This led to the bar end mirror, instead of the mirror being directly bolted to the frame of the bike. The stock mounting points of the mirrors not only restricted the mirrors' usability to next to no visibility, but I also removed said points in what I did to the headlight. Next I decided to modify the air intake to remove as much air restriction as possible to allow the engine to breath as much as it possibly could, resulting in a few extra horsepower. Before replacing the back wheel and brake light, I decided to try my hand at fine tuning the rear suspension. The result? Much smoother and sharper turning. While remounting the brake light and rear blinkers, I noticed the small lightbulb for the license plate had been shattered by a rock or something. I went to my local hardware store and replaced it with a small LED cluster and rewired that to work the same as before.
As a final touch to the bike, other than the fine tuning of the engine, I decided to install my own custom under-glow to the bike just to catch somebody's eye if desired. I chose to use blow LED strips and run them along the underside of the frame of the Ducati, wire one end directly to the positive lead on the battery, and then the other end to a switch(which I bolted directly to the frame in an easy to reach place) and then to the battery. The way it was wired allows the user to be able to have the under-glow on without the bike running and vice versa.
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You may see before and after pictures below
9-25-15
