Cafe or Restore? Ducati 500 Desmo Sport

I recently purchased this bike and have been looking at it for a while wondering what to do. It has already been painted non original colours. Including cream wheels (why would you not have done them white?) anyway I purchased it with all of the bits to put it back together. Including lots of new bit that the guy had spent a fortune on and lots of time sourcing.

I am already doing a Cafe project, Suzuki GS850that I have posted in the cafe section. this bike already has some Cafe styling cues as standard but I am chasing some suggestions as to whether to keep it going down the cafe path or to restore back to original..

What do you think???

You can't restore this (or anything else) back to original, that ship sailed on this bike a long time ago. I realize you meant back to stock but the terms "original" and "restore" get misused so much it needs to be pointed out... but I digress.

As Ducatis go it will never be all that desirable. As parallel twins go it's one of the better ones I suppose, so there's an argument to be made either way. To me, if I'm going to take the time to do a proper restoration, it's going to be on a bike that's going to be worth more when it's done. If you have everything to put it back together than that's what I'd do. If you ride it and decide it's worth the effort to restore then you can still do it. But my guess is you'll ride it and decide to move on to something else.

DesmoDog said:

As Ducatis go it will never be all that desirable.

Click to expand...

I agree. I've seen these in stock form and they're not pretty. I'm always one for keeping things stock but in this case it would probably be more work than its worth. If it were mine, I'd put it back together just enough to ride it for one season and sell all the extra stock bits. You could probably get some decent cash for them. After season one, I'd decide if I wanted to keep an customize it or sell it.

DesmoDog said:

You can't restore this (or anything else) back to original, that ship sailed on this bike a long time ago.

Click to expand...

A bike can be restored many times, but it can only be original once.

I like your advice. The first thing to do is to put it all together, get it running, and ride it. I like its lines just like it is.

^ Exactly!

I would customize it to the way I like it!