Having the bike in the shop for a few days now, and have been putting the plans together for the transformation.

First order of business was to remove the street plastic and start working on removal of all the street parts.

Having ridden the bike more than 100 miles from Redwood City to the shop, I knew it was in good running order, with a couple of exceptions. All the same, have the bodywork off makes it easier to examine things closely and determine if any additional work needed to be done.

I plan to run the bike at Laguna Seca, and the maximum sound limits are pretty strict. So, the cool Remus exhaust…
had to be replaced with the very heavy and not very sexy looking stock component.

The dash and headlights are in great shape, and I hope to keep them that way. However track bikes do not need lights. Most organizations will let you run the bike on the track if you tape them off. But I plan to remove them all together and replace the entire assembly with a race bracket. One other item that needs to be dealt with, is the lack of a factory steering stabilizer on the Ducati 749 Dark. :/ That’s not going to be cheap.

One of the repair issues I have is a leaking right front shock fork. It’s not easy to see, but it’s much wetter than it should be, and it’s known to be leaking. I knew this when I bought it. Since the forks will be re-worked for the track, I’m not too worried about it, especially since the previous owner supplied me the repair parts.

Another bit that I want to address is the clutch cover. This is looks very sturdy, and I’m sure will work far better than the stock stamped sheet metal cover in a crash. However I plan to replace it with one identical to that which I run on my 1098. It’s made by Woodraft and has a replaceable slider.