Ah, the Ducati Darmah Days. Never to be a conformist, I'd pick up a standard 860 Darmah and do the following:

Ditch the 32mm Carbies and source 40mm Delortos

Source and fit a headlight/Fairing Bracket

Ditch and Handlebars, source and fit clip-ons (wish I'd kept the two top brackets)

Source and fit rear-set pegs and linkages

Do all the fitting and tuning

Try to source the rounded front fender, so it looked like an SSD, except the paintwork. However, one did come up for sale years later in the late 90's for $600. Didn't bit at that one. Nowadays, you see SSD's with SD squared off fenders maskerading as SSD's, so they get the $40k. 

Excerpts from the upcoming book...

Take a sneak peek into "There, Back and In-Between, A Motorcyclist's Memoirs." I've handpicked some moments, designed to ignite your curiosity and get you ready for the full adventure.

 

While musing about the Bevel, I was reminded about the time on my belt drive 900 SS, with a full fairing, Red of course. Was looking at selling it, but had clutch issues. It kept snatching, so off with the cover ( I love dry clutches, no oil to deal with) and on with riffling through my many old clutch plates. Only to find I couldn’t reach the 38 mm minimum width. Oh well, off to Eurotune in Queanbeyan for a new set of plates. Not the steel plates, but just the friction ones and reached the obligatory 38mm. Fired it up and smooth riding greeted my smiling face. Again, didn’t sell it for a profit, but even those models sell for quite a bit today and a Superlite goes for heaps now. The next beast was well worth the wait. I did wait a few months before the 2003 999 came my way. Well actually (a word learnt by very young children) I flew up to the Gold Coast and bought it on the spot.

A Tricolour 1098 was sitting right next to it, but not for sale for my pocket. Rode it to Canberra in one go, with a paddock stand, my bag and assorted spares like clutch plates, blinkers, oil filters, etc. (another bag) and all occy-strapped and tied onto the back pad. Now, that was a sight! The incident with the sneaky copper with only 80km to home was not my best experience. No pleading could put his book away. My big frustration was that it was the first time (truly) I opened the 999 up to not ridiculous speeds, but enough to earn his ire. Today, the bike would be impounded, and I'd be it their tin top. The outcome was...