I had a friend ask me last night if I find that working on the bike and my truck “fills my cup”, and of course, the answer is yes. I’ve had to keep the Duke on the back burner for various reasons for way too long now, but I think I’m finally in a position to set that right.

It’s been a while, and I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but the biggest issue holding up the bike is damage to the throttle bodies. The bodies themselves are actually fine, but the rod that syncronizes them was damaged in some dumb garage mishap, at least three or four years ago. That little part is an absurd amount of money from Ducati. Shortly after that happened, I was showing the damage to someone, and I managed to knock the throttle body assembly off the work bench, which broke one of the injector housings, so things were just going down hill way too fast.

I was able to find a set at Gotham Cycles today at an acceptable price, and I ordered them, so that should be here in a week or so. First step taken. I will also need to clean and likely deal with rust inside the fuel tank, which I’m dreading, but it is what it is. Right now I can’t even get the plate off the bottom, so I expect it to be nasty. I have a spreadsheet of items that will need to be worked off to get her started, but you know, you can’t eat an elephant in one bite. This will give me an excuse to build a work table for the bike as well, which I’ve been planning and putting off forever. Since my back and knees are so very questionable lately, I need no further justification. I should probably order the front stand from Pit Bull as well.

Some random 996 porn since I have nothing new in a while.