Desmoquattro Sport Touring: A Eulogy
I spent little over a year tracking a Ducati ST4s or ST3s down and one broken handshake agreement, but I found my partner, a Senna gray 2002 Ducati ST4s. A wild superbike 996 motor tamed and put into a slightly more docile frame. It didn’t start this way. Ducati released a sport tourer in 1998 with the ST2, a 2 valve water cooled 944cc sport tourer, but Ducati people being Ducati people, it wasn’t enough. So along came the ST4. Same chassis, but with a 916 motor, and people said the same thing, not enough. So out came the ST4s; a 996 motor in the sport touring chassis but with a fully adjustable Showa front fork, Ohlins rear shock, lighter aluminum swingarm and lightweight aluminum Marchesini wheels. And the people, being people, bitched that the engine required too much maintenance and didn’t have good around town manners, so Ducati released the ST3 and ST3s. A new motor only found in this model, but it’s DNA lives on in modern Ducatis. In 2004 there was a facelift with a arguably more attractive, if not more japanese, face, new dash and a change to the wiring which saved about 5lbs. The Ducati ST line never sold well because honestly, who the hell wants a Ducati with hard bags? The line was retired in 2007 with the ST3 and ST3s being the last two models.
Me and two friends hopped in a borrowed pickup and drove up to a guy I found on criaglists just south of Burlington Vermont. The bike only had 7500 miles on it, and hadn’t been ridden in at least 6 years. I rode it up and down the street with no plate or insurance and instantly fell in love. Gave the man close to what he was asking and loaded it up and headed home, with a stop at a pizza shop. When buying a motorcycle or car, post purchase pizza is a requirement. The first order of business after buying it was a new set of belts and tires. So off she went to Dunbar Eurosport for a look over and fresh rubber. A week’s paycheck later and it was good to go. I went with the new at the time Metzler Roadtec 01, their reviews were good, my dad had high recommendations of Metzler and I just like being a weirdo.
I didn’t waste much time, a few local rides around the south shore and off we went on a trip. The bike ran flawlessly except for it occasionally not wanting to start when I pushed the button, and the extremely uncommon chance of it refusing to idle. A call to Dunbar sorted the first issue, the starter solenoids on that generation bike liked to lose connection with the wires from the button. A ziptie holding the connector in place fixed that. And a trip to Dunbar sorted the occasional refusal to idle, the TPS sensor was partially unplugged, after plugging that back in the bike gave me 15 thousand trouble free miles, except for one stop on a trip down the Blue Ridge parkway when the front wheel bearings decided that they'd had enough and started singing. Not unexpected from 17 year old bearings that hadn’t moved much during those years. Remember that last sentence.
I put roughly 20 thousand miles on the Ducati, in the process replacing the belts myself and having the valves adjusted, as well as replacing the rear wheel and sprocket carrier bearings. I traveled all over Vermont, Maine, New York, all the way down to Tail of The Dragon and back. I loved the bike, I loved the way it pulled hard from the low end, I loved how it danced in the corners and how it took just a little effort on the riders part to really hustle it through the twisties. I had a GSXR750, and while it was an absolute weapon and was undoubtedly faster, the ST4s made me smile more. The reward for keeping her running tops and wrestling her through the corners was addictive. The bark of the 90 degree V-twin downshifting into a corner and than the roar of the intakes as they gulp down air at the corner exit. I was in love with the smell of the bike at idle, bringing me back to my childhood and the smell of my dad’s BMW K100 idling, the slightly rich smell that older bikes have. Sure it looked like a catfish with down syndrome, sure it had it’s idiosyncrasies and absolutely needed to be warmed up on choke before we departed, but it was all worth it.
Even dogs love it
The past two years haven’t been good to me, between work, Covid and other obligations I hadn’t been able to take the trips I wanted to. I got a nice ride out in the catskills between the flare ups, and planned another with a couple friends. We headed out early on a Friday, headed to the Poconos, places I had traveled recently, but one of the few states in the area with good riding and were allowing travel. We met at a rest stop on the Mass pike and we headed out. I-90 to I84 into New York where we’d hop off and head to Port Jervis. We were making good time, traffic was clear all the way, not even a slow down passing through Hartford. And than it happened. I went to accelerate and it wouldn’t. It would maintain speed, but just felt like it had dropped a cylinder. Fuck, I’m out of gas, must have a leak. We pulled off on the side of the road. Gauge said I had ¾ tank, so I opened the cap up, I definitely had gas. Next guess is a coil, but I didn’t feel the need to strip the bike down on the side of the highway, so I hopped on, feeling sick forcing a injured bike to run on one cylinder down the road. First exit was for New Britain and into a school parking lot. Stopping in the shade a friend immediately got on the phone looking for a coil while I was testing to confirm my diagnosis. The closest dealership parts guy was an absolute asshole, insisting that my bike doesn’t have a coil, while I was looking at one. And when I asked if he would just look up the part # and see if they had one, he didn’t even wait 30 seconds to say “we don’t have it” Fucking dick. It didn’t matter anyways, both coils were firing. My worst fear came true. I dug in deeper to confirm it. Fuck.
The horizontal cylinder’s belt had snapped. This bike was going nowhere. In case you don’t know what a timing belt is; it’s something that makes the valves open in close, and when it breaks, you run a high risk of the valves hitting the piston, which isn’t good at all. Ducati is the only motorcycle company that uses them, and even they’re begging to replace them with timing chains, the new V4 from Ducati has a chain instead of belts. I called for a ego bruising ride home while my friend’s carried on the trip. No need to lose the deposit on the hotel room. While waiting for the ride I played with the bike some and thought there was enough rotation of the cams that nothing was damaged. I was wrong, dead wrong.
Since I was laid off because of Covid, I had free time. I tore into the Ducati after ordering new belts, I had convinced myself I had spent 100 years worth of luck on the piston not hitting the valves, but lady luck is fickle. I took the cylinder head off and all 4 valves were smoked, the intake valves taking the brunt of it. Which means the head is also probably damaged. Replacement parts were obnoxiously expensive if I bought them straight from Ducati. It would run again, but it’ll be a frankenbike with used parts off ebay. I’m pretty sure a bearing for a pulley for the timing belt seized, remember how I said they were 17 year old bearings? The grease gets thick and doesn’t like to move. The more I spun the bearing, the harder it got to spin, but this is where it sits right now. The bike is taken apart and had to get moved from my shop to a friends garage since I’ve been evicted. I have a ton of new parts to go on it to get it running and riding again, as well as a special tool to torque the head nuts. Most of the bike is sitting in a milk crate, just recently getting the call from Dunbar that the new used head is all set, whoever put the head together shimmed it so badly the valves were hanging open. Just gotta get some space in my buddies garage and solve the puzzle of figuring which bolt goes where. Protip: when disassembling things, organize the bolts into marked ziplock bags, not just a tupperware with exactly 16.5 million bolts, like I did. I’ll put some videos together of the tear down and rebuild when I get the motivation.
These are engine valves, they’re supposed to be straight
Also, since the cataclysm of pistons meeting valves, I got into a motorcycle accident and the GSXR got totaled, and the insurance payout put me in the ballpark of a KTM 1290 Superduke GT, so I bought it. It’s a replacement for the Ducati. But what now? Theres no market for the ST bikes, nobody wants a weird looking Ducati with hardbags, and the people who do already own one. I may trade it for a Monster. The OG ones but with fuel injection, or maybe a S2R1000; a nice simple aircooled 2 valve motor, much less exotic and simpler to keep maintained by myself. I’m not scared away from Ducati, It’s not the bikes fault I fucked up. I should have replaced the bearings while I was doing the wheels bearings, but it simply hadn’t crossed my mind. But a part of me also doesn’t want to let it go. Sure the KTM is the better bike, but the bags are smaller, and it doesn’t have the same charm, or the CLACK CLACK CLACK of the dry clutch, or the prestige of being a DUCATI. Plus, I have attachment to it. I have alot of good memories on the bike, or The Gray Lady as my girlfriend dubbed her. We did nearly 20 thousand miles together hauling me and my camera gear all over. My girlfriend and I also have gone on alot of rides together on it. I’ll miss it when it’s time for it to go, but I hope it finds a good home. I’ll update this when whatever happens happens, and probably make a few posts about the reassembly when I get the bits together. For now, she’s unregistered, uninsured and sitting in a friends garage, waiting to be revived.