Earned - The Story of Keith Hale and his 100k mile 1974 Ducati 750SS 

AGREEE--- LEGEND

Agreed -- we got a ticket when we were filming this --- HAHAHHA

Taglioni is God! love it !!

Yes, the story has so much meaning. One the proudest projects I have ever been apart of.

LABOR OF LOVE !

Thank you -- it was a pleasure to tell this story

Correction....Keith.

@@johncameron125 this was a project of love for us -- the love and respect of our shared passions for 2 wheels

Truly amazing story

Thank you -- this was a very important story to tell for us.

THANK YOU -- it was a great pleasure to be apart of this

THANK YOU -- LABOR OF LOVES

I heard Keith was hard to keep up with on her... Not the same as the Art of the MC bike -- I have handled that 750SS as well -- posters coming soon

I hear you -- same as Keith -- same as me -- I have one one way

@@motoborgotaroinc7343 Side stands are bad. If you sit down then start the engine. That awesome drumbeat. can make you forget to put the side stand up. Then you remember when making that first left hand turn.

THANK YOU -- the story was a pleasure to tell!

It is perhaps the piece I am the most proud to be apart of --

Thank you

A lot of those early super sports were raced and presumably trashed.

the best !

From one Darmah owner to another. 👍

Thank you so much -- make sure to share ! lets get the views up !!!!

Thank you -- this video was very important to me to be apart of

A fine machine as well !

Your friend is sitting on a gold mine.

Thank you !

I can ask Keith if youde like. I had lunch with him today 10/04/2022

Actually, if the round case engine has it's oil changed frequently, wore air filters and was not abused, it is not unheard of to get fairly high miles out of them. Being entirely ball and roller bearing, the engines were fairly tolerant of crap in the oil. And the crank has a sludge trap that was fairly effective at catching crap before the crank pin. To have damaged your cases, I would have to guess that your 750's crank had been improperly shimmed, the wrong bearings, or both, most likely by someone outside of the factory. Those bearing are 15 degree contact and very expensive. Often someone who didn't know better would use 40 degree bearings with poor results. The early 860 based engines had short crank life due to using the 750 crank pin. The upgraded pin in the later 900 cured the short crank life. The "popping out" was more to do with abused dogs and speed shifting. Yes, removing the shorter dogs did help engagement, at the expense of more backlash. The 3 dog box became standard around 1980. And fyi, the Conti isn't a glass pack, rather it is all steel with a perforated straight through center tube. I completely agree that the Round case is a work of art. Some of that was lost with the Square case. The best is the Mille. Ducati got it's looks and mechanicals right.

@@tdkeyes1 Gearboxes on those bikes were very poorly machined, when the various dogs between a pair of ears were supposed to mesh in Siri all the dogs with mash on both pieces evenly at the same time. But in reality they were not machine evenly and in fact maybe one dog pear would engage and take the entire load because the machining was lets a higher or less material had been removed. Of course then that particular dog would soon fail because one dog can’t take the entire load for any length of time pretty soon you have a gearbox that is popping out of gear. And then of course means the engines comes apart. When they went to the external crossover shift mechanism it was even more likely to have incomplete shifts due to friction in the linkage and then the gears would also be popping apart and soon be ruined. That would be in the 76 and up engines. Ducati eventually admitted the tolerances for assembling their crankshafts were questionable, ha ha as in I think if you got 15 or 20 k Miles on a crankshaft you are doing well. And that has nothing to do with oil changes. My first tower shaft bike was a GT 750. On that bike first I had the gearbox problem but then the crankshaft got loose in the cases. As I recall the bearings sat in steel rings but the steel rings were loose in the aluminum case. I eventually put a Darmsh engine into a frame. Well that time at least they had a decent Japanese style internal shifting mechanism

If balanced, shimmed and assembled correctly and with regular two to four k oil changes, the roundcase engines will run a lot longer than 20k. Not that it’s difficult to remove and tear them down. Quite a few were used for endurance and production racing here in Australia in the 70s. We were Ducatis biggest market for them at one time around 1975 I believe. The factory even built some GTs and Sports in 1978 just for the Oz market in response to a request to Fraser’s, the NSW distributor. I’ve owned and built a few and I never saw any fibreglass packing in Contis, Lafranconis or Imola exhausts( all perforated steel internal tubes and none at all in the case of the latter.There was also a race kit supplied with the 74 models and a factory race kit available which included a long list of parts including oil cooler, cams and a bunch of sprockets. Don’t know if any of the kits have survived. Ian Falloons books on various Ducati models provide all the answers.

I rode my first 750 GT roundcase in Western Australia in the 70s, typically everywhere at 100mph, and in searing heat. Every 1000 miles, changed the oil - BP Corse 50+ - no multigrade. It would run like that for a very long time. I've done 750+ miles in a day like that - mostly sitting on 100 mph. You'll have less big end bearing problems if you get the timing sorted with the single timing plate, but twin points - and there's a trick to doing that. IIRC, the front pot ran hotter than the rear too, so it worked better with different heat range plugs. Like most owners, I quickly ditched the standard air cleaner system and used the mushroom washable foam filters. I never had problems with the gearbox on either roundcase that I owned. The roundcase engine is as much art as it is engineering. Dr Taglioni was a true genius.