It’s been a few years, but I really wanted to do a write up how I came to build my race bike: a Suzuki SV650 powered Ducati 1098S- or as I like to call it, a “Duzucati”. A big reason why I wanted to write this up is because building custom/one off race bikes used to be a lot more popular, but with the advent of the modern “street bike” (really a race bike with mirrors and blinkers) custom bikes have gotten a lot rarer. People no longer need to do radical custom modifications to get a bike to make good horsepower and handle properly- you just need to walk into the local dealer and give him some money.

I had originally planned on glossing over some of the problems in order to focus on the positive parts of the story, but after a lot of consideration I decided to tell the whole story because I wanted to be honest about the experience. Building the bike and making it competitive wasn’t easy and it seemed dishonest to pretend that everything went smoothly.

With that said, here’s my story… Continue reading →