Greetings everyone.
I have just been given a 1988 750 Paso by my father. I didn't really know what I was getting into until I found this forum. Now, I feel as though I am part of an elite group of bike owners
I had ridden the bike before a few years back, approximately 2006. Back then she was running like a champ. Since then, I have spent most of my professional career traveling around the US and Canada. Not too long after I had the pleasure of riding my fathers bike, he had an accident at work, and has been pretty much forced to retire, (both ankles and lower legs were shattered in the incident) He has not driven the bike since. It has set covered in his garage since 2006. I am currently relocating from Florida to far south Texas. The area is nice and has many great days to ride mostly all year. I had mentioned this to my father, and he suggested that I take the Ducati. He said he feels bad that she has sat covered and ignored for so long. He just dug up the title and signed over the bike to me. No charge. A gift. We went to the garage and pulled the cover off the bike. The tires were dry rotted, there was rust in the gas tank, and much of the paint was peeling from the engine after I managed to get the fairings off the side. The battery was dead and corroded (as you can imagine almost 7 years of sitting idle will do). The upside to this was that my father has basically a full service auto shop on the property that he still hobbles around in and tinkers here and there. It was at that point I opened my fathers toolbox, the same one that he used to show me how to fiddle around under the hood with when I was a kid. I am now 30 with a 2 year old son of my own, and he and I and grandpa whipped out the tools and went to work to see if it was worth putting money into. The first thing I did was to remove the fuel tank, seeing as how it was pretty rusty inside. After that the old battery and battery cables. I spliced some new battery cables and eyelets into the bike, and replaced a few other dry rotted wires. We then carefully removed the Weber carb, and broke it down piece by piece. Amazingly, every gasket was still in great shape and came off without so much as a nick. We cleaned every port and jet, the filter inline with the float bowl, and made sure it was completely clean before putting it back together. My father cleaned and oiled the K&N air filter, and it looked almost brand new. We pulled the spark plugs, they were still pretty clean, but ran them across and wire brush wheel for good measure. Then came the scariest moment for us. We attached a battery charger to the battery cables and turned the key on. Immediately the gauges and headlight lit up. I started to get a little excited at this point. My father sprayed some starting fluid into the newly cleaned carburetor and I pressed the ignition switch and slightly turned the throttle. The bike roared to life! It sounded just as loud and powerful as it had the last time I had heard it! My son started crying as soon as the dual pipes started screaming, it had obviously scared the crap out of him and me nor his grandpa had warned him of the possibility. This all lasted only about 2 seconds before we shut it down, not wanting to damage anything. However, we now knew she would run again. After this I have ordered new tires, and after seeing some posts on the forum here, I fear I may have gotten screwed. I found tires on eBay, made by Avalon and advertised for a Ducati Paso 750. So I bought them. I just received them via FedEx and haven't yet gotten them installed. Please, can someone on here tell me I made a wise purchase? I'm starting to think that while the tires will fit the wheels (130/70ZR16 front and 150/80R16 rear) but maybe I'm going to have to modify the front fender to get them to fit under there properly. Anywho, thats the beginning to my story so far. I will post pics and more as the project moves along and share my progress with y'all. Before I close, any tips on cleaning rust out of a fuel tank?Thanks,
Marshall
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It would have been wiser trying to get the GoldenTires which are the only ones that make the correct sizes. The two concerns with a 150/80 are that even though you can put them on a 5" rim, they are made for narrower ones and that they are very high. As a consequence the tire can hit the front of the swingarm. You can correct this a bit by turning the axle excenter but by doing this you will lose range which is normally used to set chain tension. So it`s a bit of a compromise. A common one when there were no tire alternatives which was just until a little time ago.