The Dirtbag Challenge was an interesting event in which entrants would have limited time and budget to build a chopper that also has to be ridden at least 100 miles on the day of the event. Here’s an oddball entrant from a few years ago that started as a Ducati 900 – your guess is as good as mine as to if it was a SS or a Monster. If this sort of looks familiar, it may be because I featured a similar concept from the same builder in the summer…but that started as a Yamaha RD400.
It’s an interesting event, and I’d recommend checking out some of these articles discussing previous runnings:
RevZilla
Dan Brown on Medium
The Bikers Garage
Motorcyclist Online
Motorcycle.com
One of the names you’ll see in some of those stories is Julian Farnam, who unfortunately passed away recently. This Ducati was one of his creations, and the seller is helping Julian’s widow with the sale. Per the seller, “This is a one-off custom hand-built motorcycle purpose built for the annual Dirtbag Challenge event. Built by master motorcycle frame and fabricator Julian Farnam. It is titled as a 1997 Ducati RS. I am no expert on these engines but it appears that this is a Ducati 900 SS engine. I know that this motorcycle ran as it was ridden in the Dirtbag Challenge. More than likely, it was ridden a few times after that. But I have no idea when it was last started. It will not be started for this sale and is being sold AS IS in nonrunning condition.”
Here’s Julian with the bike in 2015:
In the past, Julian would work with a friend who owned Flight cycles in SoCal, they were known for customizing Monsters and Julian would graft SS rear suspensions on to monsteres 9requireing extesnive frame modifications to “to remove the original rocker pivots and locate new upper shock mounts over the rear cylinder.” It would appear that much of what Julian learned in this project led to his work with the owners of Fictiv to create the Monster-based FOSMC (Fictiv Open Source Motorcycle).
Find this custom Ducati for sale in Livermore, California for $1,800 here on Facebook Marketplace.