Introduction

Hello everyone that might be reading this blog!

For some time, I have been playing with the idea of building a real old school cafe racer. For those of you, who are not familiar with the concept of the cafe racer, here is some further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_racer

Having that straightened out, I will tell you a bit more about my ideas for this project, which have not even launched yet.

I own a Ducati Pantah 500, and from time to another I have been thinking of the design of the Pantah as boring and "soft". So I always thought that there would be room for improvement. Be your own judge on that matter.

Never the less, I believed that the Pantah frame would be a great platform to build a cafe racer on. I sometimes wondered, if I should sacrifice my Pantah to this project, but that became unnecessary when a friend said that he had a Cagiva Alazzurra for sale. The Cagiva Alazzurra is based on more or less the same frame as a Ducati Pantah. Back in the '80s, Cagiva and Ducati - and Moto Guzzi for that matter - shared a lot of components. However, the Cagivas also used Ducati engines, which means that a 600-700ccm ducati engine up until today should fit right in, with no major changes to the frame.
Yes, that is the beauty of Ducati... Take a 25 y.o. frame, and then fit it with an engine from the 21st century, and you have a bike that is future-proofed for many years, regarding spare parts and so on.