1975 Ducati 860 - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Test Article

Description

1975 Ducati 860 - 6-Page Vintage Motorcycle Test Article
Original, Vintage Magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
Ducati's 750cc V-twin
turned many heads
when it appeared on
these shores in 1972.
Monthly and weekly mo-
torcycle publications,
especially the ones from Italy and
Germany, had touted it very highly. It
was some time after these articles
appeared in print that any of the
750s found their way to these shores,
and a regrettably longer time before
this writer got to ride one.
Many stories about the "Duck”
were heard, one especially from Paul
Smart, who won the inaugural Imola
200-mile race in the spring of 1972.
Paul had nothing but praise for the
machine, saying it was the best han-
dling big-bore road racing machine
he’d ever thrown a leg over. He even
quipped that it was smoother (had
less of the rider-fatiguing high-fre-
quency vibration) than his “works”
Triumph 750cc triple. The Ducati
folks in Italy were so pleased with his
Imola performance that they gave
him the machine and he's since de-
tailed it out, polishing and chroming
it into a potential show winner any-
where . . . unlike some of the first
models which came to America.
American motorcycle enthusiasts
are accustomed to looking at V-
twins. Ever since the early 1900s the
most popular motorcycles have been
of V-twin configuration. The remain-
ing American manufacturer, Harley-
Davidson, uses the V-twin even today
in its Sportster and 74-cubic-inch
machines, and there is a great deal
to be said for the design. A large-
capacity V-twin may be kept very
narrow and can be placed well down
in the frame to lower the machine's
center of gravity . . . important to
good handling.
Most V-twins have been of the
"narrow-angle" design; that is, hav-
ing an angle of less than 90 degrees
between the cylinders. For example,
the Harley-Davidsons use a 45-
degree angle, the Indian V-twins had
a 42-degree difference between the
cylinder bore centerlines and per-
haps the most revered V-twin of re-
cent years, the Vincent, boasted a
50-degree angle between cylinders.
A few difficulties arise from such a
design, and these include the fact
that the front cylinder partially blocks
the cooling airflow to the rear cylin-
der. For high-performance applica-
tions this is less than ideal, but there
have been some exceptions to this.
The most notable is probably the
Vincent which has the connecting
rods mounted side-by-side which ne-
cessitated that the cylinders be offset
slightly. With the rear cylinder's ex-
haust pipe facing the front of the
motorcycle, and that cylinder being
offset to the right-hand side (as
viewed from the saddle by the rider),
rear cylinder cooling becomes much
better.
With "wide-angle" V-twins (with
90-degrees or more between the cyl-
inders) the cooling problems cease
to exist, but others arise. The Ducati,
for example, features a vertical cylin-
der and a horizontal one, with nei-
ther obstructing the other's cooling
air flow. But there’s a styling difficulty
because the horizontal cylinder has
cooling fins that are just "back-
wards” to the ones on the vertical
cylinder. This problem confronts the
stylist who must make the motorcycle
aesthetically pleasing to the buying...
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