Shrunken Supersport

SHRUNKEN SUPERSPORT

Just a trick of the light, right?

ACROSS THE PARKING LOT sits a gleaming yellow jewel of a 1970s Ducati bevel-drive Supersport, but something just isn’t right. There’s too much air between the front wheel and the engine, and it just rolled out of the back of a midsize van, not really big enough for a proper 750.

It’s when you get a little closer you realize that you’re looking at a 350cc Single built as a replica of an old 750SS, but absolutely spot-on in nearly every regard. Except for the missing cylinder, of course.

The level of craftsmanship the bike’s owner/builder Ted Henry put into its creation is so high that many people believe it to be some rare production machine from the era.

The illusion was even more powerful with Henry’s original version, painted like the fabled green-frame Imola replica, which he sold several years ago. That first one even fooled Jay Leno, who asked at the time how many of the diminutive 350cc Supersports Ducati built.

The answer is, of course, none.

Which is why Henry went to work on his own. The Southern Californian got his start in Ducati Singles after he retired from 30 years of teaching art and history in high school.

“I started doing Italian bikes then,” Henry says. “Being at the shows and so forth, I met (mega-collector) Guy Webster and he asked if I would restore a bike for him. I was quite flattered, and for the last 7 years I’ve been doing bikes for him almost exclusively.”

In between Webster work, Henry restores and builds bikes for himself in his home shop and stays active on different club rides and in shows.

“I ride the little SS maybe six times per year,” he says.

It doesn’t sound like much, but he’s also got a beautiful ’65 Mach 1 250cc, a modified ’70s 750GT, a 1992 900SS Superlight, and just picked up a 2004 Monster S4R. This Ducati lover’s stable is full, in other words.

The yellow mini-SS is based on one of the so-called widecase models, which feature a larger sump and stronger kickstart mechanism than the narrow-case ones that came before. With the later 450s notorious for their vibration, this desmo 350 is the Single to have. It’s built to run, too, featuring a 34mm Dell’ Orto pumper in place of the 29mm that was standard at the time.

Because the old Ducati electrical systems are notoriously unreliable, Henry fitted a Ducati Scrambler magneto and runs the lights on a total-loss 12-volt system.

“I never ride at night, the way it’s set up is fine,” he says.

The rearset controls were custom-made, and naturally those sparkling spokes are connected to Borrani alloy rims. Twin disc brakes come courtesy of Ducati’s less-fabled models, the GTL500 parallelTwin, as did the entire front end. AirTech bodywork is covered in Ducati yellow paint shot by Henry himself, although the tankside brushed-on fly wasn’t his work.

“The fly is a famous old story,” Henry says. “As I understand it, Cycle magazine’s Phil Schilling got one of the very first 750 Imolas back in the 1970s. It came to him with a fly stuck into the clear fuel stripe that you use to see the level. It must have gotten in there when they were laying the fiberglass for the tank at the factory, so I made a point to paint a fly on my bike. The people who know the story see that and get a real kick out of it.”

Actually, everybody gets a kick out of this bike. Henry in particular, simply because it represents how nicely he feels life has turned out.

“If somebody asked me, ‘What would you like to do if you set up a perfect retirement plan?’ I couldn’t think of a better situation than working the way that I do.”

We should all be so lucky. -Mark Hoyer

American FLYERS