Ride magazine has a 916.....looks familiar!

Dave G

Dave G

New member
Its a very rare thing to be able to follow what happens to a bike after you pass it on,turns out that the 916 bought by Ride as a long term test bike was the one I owned for most of its life.:cool:
It'll be interesting to watch what happens to it and how it lasts. :)
 
Dave G said:
Its a very rare thing to be able to follow what happens to a bike after you pass it on,turns out that the 916 bought by Ride as a long term test bike was the one I owned for most of its life.:cool:
It'll be interesting to watch what happens to it and how it lasts. :)
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I had the converse happen. Back in January 1979 I bought an ex-demonstrator 900ss with 1800 miles on it from Coburn & Hughes, the then Ducati importers. It was one of the black & Gold pre-production models, registered on 8th May 1978 and probably the first in the country. When I collected it I found that it was the same one that had been thrashed by all the magazine roadtesters :eek:. I still have copies of Bike, Superbike and Motorcycle Mechanics with the road tests in it. 131mph, 12.8 secs for a standing quarter and 69bhp at the rear wheel. It was ludicrously over geared and went far better after I'd swapped the 33t rear sprocket for a 36, and better still after I put Imola cams in.
C&H had given it a rebore but didn't tell me that, but it went well enough for the next 11 years before I sold it to a bloke called Glen Campbell from Clydebank. I've never seen nor heard of it since. YRO 450S where are you now?
 
dave get in contact with them & tell them u owned it for however long.

it should go well as u nurtured it :)

/ian
 
Derek said:
I had the converse happen. Back in January 1979 I bought an ex-demonstrator 900ss with 1800 miles on it from Coburn & Hughes, the then Ducati importers. It was one of the black & Gold pre-production models, registered on 8th May 1978 and probably the first in the country. When I collected it I found that it was the same one that had been thrashed by all the magazine roadtesters :eek:. I still have copies of Bike, Superbike and Motorcycle Mechanics with the road tests in it. 131mph, 12.8 secs for a standing quarter and 69bhp at the rear wheel. It was ludicrously over geared and went far better after I'd swapped the 33t rear sprocket for a 36, and better still after I put Imola cams in.
C&H had given it a rebore but didn't tell me that, but it went well enough for the next 11 years before I sold it to a bloke called Glen Campbell from Clydebank. I've never seen nor heard of it since. YRO 450S where are you now?
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You never know Derek he might see your post! :comp2: maybe not!
 
I had a simular thing happen with my first Ducati.
I had a Mk 1 500 Pantah and had bought it from my best friend who had owned it from new (1981) and slowly restored it back to what was probably better than factory finish!
I subsequently traded it in for my F1 Santamonica while working for Baines Racing in '97. So I got to sell it while working there. In the meantime I had been asked by 'Classic Bike' magazine if they could borrow it for a photoshoot for a feature on belt driven Ducs. It and I were featured in the January 1998 issue. It was just about the best in the country!!
Anyway it went to some to*ser on the south coast. That was that until I was invited by Ducati UK to display the TT2 in the Ducati concours marque at the 2002 Goodwood FOS. Got free tickets for the weekend for the pleasure (as you do) and low and behold while wandering around the Ducati stand and into their marque along with our TT2, there was my Pantah stood there looking exactly the same as the day I sold it, I was gobsmacked there was my bike on display at Goodwood! I think the image almost portrays my amazement! :)

...made me quite proud it did!!! :)
 
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dunno - My mate bought it brand new from Bob Hill Motorcycles in Hertford and registered down there. I always thought that it had a Herts reg. :confused:
 
239desmo said:
See your Pantah has a Scottish reg no Eddie. Where was it bought originally do you know?
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The GS registrations were originally Perthshire but with the re-organisation of registration areas in the mid '70's it became one of the Tayside numbers along with SP, SR, ST and maybe a few others. The only Tayside dealer that I'm aware of selling Ducatis in the early '80s was Jack Gow of Dundee. (That's where I bought my first Ducati, a new 860GTS in December 1976 reg. no. OSP 139R) I might even have seen the bike in it's early days although there were very few Pantahs sold around here. If I remember right a bloke called Andrew Malloch had one the same around that time.
 
ProjectImola004 said:
dunno - My mate bought it brand new from Bob Hill Motorcycles in Hertford and registered down there. I always thought that it had a Herts reg. :confused:
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My understanding has been that any reg no with an "S" in it (2nd or 3rd letter) was always issued in Scotland. Glasgow was an exception as they used *GA, *GE etc. When the family were travelling anywhere at that time that was the game we played spotting where in the country all the other vehicles came from. I suppose it stopped us asking if we were "nearly there yet?"!
 
ST was an Inverness number and "The Saint" aka Roger Moore of course used that....(more useless info..:) )
 
239desmo said:
ST was an Inverness number and "The Saint" aka Roger Moore of course used that....(more useless info..:) )
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Oops! Right enough Stewart. Dundee was TS.
 
Hey; maybe I ended up buying a 'cut & shut' motorbike!!! :D
Pantah UGS 545W never came as far as Scotland (at least when I knew it anyway)

C'mon then you anoraks; where did my Santamonica come from - E787JPE???
 
well I'll be... it only came from wigan - ain't there anymore!!!! I sold it for £8500 to a guy in Sweden back in '99!!! :D
 
ProjectImola004 said:
well I'll be... it only came from wigan - ain't there anymore!!!! I sold it for £8500 to a guy in Sweden back in '99!!! :D
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Nearly Ed! It came from Surrey! you take the last two not the first two letters!
 
...well Wigan is close to Surrey....'bout 2" on my map!!!

when you live where I do anyway :D

That ties in right in all seriousness, I got it from Camberley, where it had spent all it's life.
 
Steve748 said:
Nearly Ed! It came from Surrey! you take the last two not the first two letters!
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I'm obviously living in the past. GS was issued by Perthshire until 1974 when it was moved down south. GS is currently issued as a prefix by Brighton, though I think that's in Sussex.
 
Derek said:
I'm obviously living in the past. GS was issued by Perthshire until 1974 when it was moved down south. GS is currently issued as a prefix by Brighton, though I think that's in Sussex.
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The new style prefix numbers are much more of a mystery to me and the use of "S" is certainly not exclusive to Scotland. Fairly certain Eddie's old bike WAS registered North of the border though. The old Ross & Cromarty (now Ross-shire) numbers were JS and they were issued in Stornoway (not sure why the DVLA of it's day picked there!) but when the number style was changing a lot of the JS numbers had been unused (lack of population!) and they were used by the DVLA to put onto cars etc that had been stripped of their original number to keep it "age related". The same applied to the Inverness numbers "ST" and "AS". Hope you're paying attention Eddie cos if you fail the test at the end you won't be allowed to stay here!!:D If you look at the old cars in shows and on the box you will notice how many have these numbers.
 
Well I gotta scratch my head there Stewart, it was registered to an address in Letchworth and remained there until '91 until I took it over to Germany re-registering it over there. I got it's old number back when I returned but why would it have a Scottish number if it was first registered in Hertford?:confused: :confused:
 
ProjectImola004 said:
Well I gotta scratch my head there Stewart, it was registered to an address in Letchworth and remained there until '91 until I took it over to Germany re-registering it over there. I got it's old number back when I returned but why would it have a Scottish number if it was first registered in Hertford?:confused: :confused:
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Pass Eddie, the fact that the first owner was in England would have no bearing on where the bike was registered. Could it have been that the bike was actually in Scotland and whatever deal was done at the time involved bike being registered by a dealer in Scotland but showing the first owner as your mate? Was this the only Pantah available at that time and it happened to be North? You would probably have to trace either the dealer or get info from importer at that time as to where that particular bike was originally sent. Something for you to do over the festivities. :) Well that and fix the Xmas tree lights!
 
This site has a lot of info regarding UK registration numbers but it's not very clear on the period between 1974, when the DVLA took control of registrations from local authorities, and the present system introduced in 2001; but I'm inclined to think that Eddie's bike has an English registration with a suffix that had previously been used for Perthshire. We still see a lot of "GS" plates on older vehicles around here.
 
I've sussed it. I found yet another site with previous reg number regions. After GS left Perthshire it went to Luton before being moved to Brighton when the new numbering system was introduced in 2001. Now at the time Ed's bike was new Coburn & Hughes were the Ducati importers and they were based in Luton. So there you are. The 900SS I mentioned above also came from Coburn & Hughes and it's nregistration was YRO which was also a Luton number.
 
239desmo said:
The new style prefix numbers are much more of a mystery to me and the use of "S" is certainly not exclusive to Scotland. Fairly certain Eddie's old bike WAS registered North of the border though. The old Ross & Cromarty (now Ross-shire) numbers were JS and they were issued in Stornoway (not sure why the DVLA of it's day picked there!) but when the number style was changing a lot of the JS numbers had been unused (lack of population!) and they were used by the DVLA to put onto cars etc that had been stripped of their original number to keep it "age related". The same applied to the Inverness numbers "ST" and "AS". Hope you're paying attention Eddie cos if you fail the test at the end you won't be allowed to stay here!!:D If you look at the old cars in shows and on the box you will notice how many have these numbers.
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that also applied to the su letters a lot of them were put on american import cars for some reason to keep them age related
 
weeian said:
ANORAKS ! :p

/ian
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Could be worse!... could discuss golf or even merits of different dangly bits on MTB'S:p (Just getting my flak jacket and tin helmet on now! :lol2: )
 
239desmo said:
Could be worse!... could discuss golf or even merits of different dangly bits on MTB'S:p (Just getting my flak jacket and tin helmet on now! :lol2: )
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I was quite enjoying this, but OK, dangly bits........Shimano XT rear mechs anyone? how many different incarnations of that since it was introduced? :) I know of at least five, but...........
 
Hmmmmm.

Is there a section on the forum where you can post the reg and details of your old bikes to see if someone has some history or owned it once before?

Bit like "Where are they now"?
 
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