Alright, starting off with an uncontroversial one - who’s on your Mount Rushmore of motorcycle racers? What kind of criteria could even narrow down such a broad field of historical candidates? We weighed up a mix of championships, riding style, off track antics and general aura to arrive at a single mountain’s worth of top guns. For us, we’re carving out Giacomo Agostini, Valentino Rossi, Mick Doohan and Mike ‘The Bike’ Hailwood. Of course there are many arguments to be made for others, and I’m sure that we could hear the cacophony of mashed computer keys launching waves of protest if we weren’t already jackhammering our champions into granite-based immortality.

Given this, you can imagine how excited we got when Glenn’s email about a potential ground up restomod of his 1981 Mike Hailwood Replica Ducati hit our inbox. The odds of one of these bikes reaching us in any context are very long. Sure, Australia is a big land mass, but we’re a small population tucked away down here in relative isolation. Even rarer still is one of these bikes presenting itself with an owner who’d prefer to get creative with the project rather than playing it safe with a faithful restoration. Glenn and his MHR project were a real goldilocks pairing for us, and we were excited to honour that good fortune with build worthy of one of our GOAT racers.

Initial stages chatting back and forth about the scope & framework of the project revealed that Glenn had a good eye for design as well as some very detailed ideas on particular angles and visual lines that he wanted to achieve with the modifications. Once we understood the direction he was chasing we were able to break out the pen & paper and begin the collaborative design process as like minded individuals. Once we have hand sketched a few solid designs we generated a series of concept renders in Photoshop until we reached a happy balance somewhere between broad strokes and fine detail. At this point we could take the project off the page and begin tearing into the real thing.

The first port of call was the heart of the beast. It was determined only fair that a complete aesthetic refresh of the bike should also warrant a proper fine tooth combing of the mechanical components, so the engine was promptly removed from the frame. We’re no strangers to an engine rebuild here, but if our experience has taught us anything it’s that when someone becomes universally known as ‘the guy’, it’s probably for good reason. During chats with our most in the know Ducati friends during the build up to this project, the name Brook Henry was an absolute lock to pop in conversation every time. It was a no brainer for us, so the engine was boxed up safe and sound and shipped across the country to the bevel experts at Vee Two. Brook’s history with Ducatis and the MHR in particular has literally spanned a lifetime, and his passion hasn’t wavered one bit. Check out the @Ducati900SS YouTube channel for a recent interview delving into some of his past, present and future projects.

While the engine was off getting its HP massaged in Western Australia, we got stuck into the geometry of the bike back here in Brisbane. Glenn was keen to graft a late model Ducati 848 front end to the bike for a bit of modern day cushion & stopping power. One of the hurdles this presented was getting the offset of the new brake calipers perfectly lined up with the disc mounting on the original Fratelli Pedrini Sarezzo wheels. Lacing up new wheels wasn’t an option - FPS are synonymous with the big European marques of the day, making iconic sand cast Italian alloy wheels for Porsche, BMW E3’s & E9’s, and of course Ducati. Our typical approach would be to roll with a standard rotor paired with some offset caliper mounting brackets secured to the forks, but that approach is more suited to axial mount calipers, and our new big boy clamps were radial mounts. Eventually we bit the bullet and spec’ed up some custom offset floating discs to marry everything up in beautiful parallel harmony, and even used the excuse to write ‘Ellaspede’ on them.

Out of the box the MHR’s were known to be a little sluggish in steering and were also susceptible to wallowing at speed. We had some ideas of how we might smoke out these geometric gremlins, and took the opportunity to bounce these ideas off Brook’s seasoned brain between any engine chat. The tweaks we made in the end are discrete once fully assembled, but vastly improve the way the bike enters corners and provide added stability at speed. The tank is of course the original unit, fully refurbished, lined and painted. The seat cowl is a completely hand-fabricated aluminium outer married up to an end plug that we modelled in CAD and CNC-machined from block ABS plastic. An original plan was to create this entire rear plug section as a transparent stop/tail running light, but some careful consideration determined that it pushed the bike a step too far away from its original pedigree.

The bike’s wiring was completely replaced from top to bottom. The original loom was removed in favour of a fully custom motogadget mo.unit set up, incorporating a key fob and analogue gauge from the same family. We had quite a specific spot that we wanted to position the headlight in to best compliment the overall visual lines, and we knew that an off the shelf item wasn’t going to deliver that for us - so we jumped back into CAD and modelled those up for CNC machining, before finishing them with a ceramic coat to tie in with other pieces dotted around the build.

The plan for the exhaust was a two horse race, with a 2 into 1 approach eventually winning out over the 2 into 2 alternative. The bends and transitions of the headers were informed by exhaust flow rates to keep things balanced between the two streams. A Conti muffler courtesy of Lindsay (a fellow Ducati enthusiast and friend of the shop), was modified to tuck in as snugly as possible and ensure maximum foot clearance, lest the rider be churning through left boots at an alarming rate. In a way, ‘compact’ was the the overall theme of the project. Placement of each component on the bike was thoroughly considered with the aim of being as tightly tucked in as they could be, as we wanted the final result to feel visually light and in stark contrast to the original silhouette, which some had heralded as outdated and whale-like back when it was first released.

We’re incredibly grateful to Glenn for bringing us this bike, and if not already evidenced, it was an absolute pleasure to work on it with him! We got the chance to add our little touch to something historic, all whilst opening the door to some more great new relationships such as that with Brook at Vee Two. We’d be remiss if we didn’t give a shout out to our very own Gaven Dall’Osto (a huge contributor to the Ellaspede blog page) here too - as it turns out, Gaven and Glenn grew up as mates and have ridden together over a decades-long friendship. They even made their way over to the Isle of Man TT, and they’re good for more than a few funny stories if you get them in the same room together. It was great to have Gaven along for the journey of this project as another pillar of knowledge to draw upon. It’s always fun working on bikes, and it’s even more fun working on beautiful old bikes that represent a piece of history close to your heart - but it’s often the friendships and connections that really make us love doing this. We reckon this project has got it all.

Albums we listened to during the build of this bike:

Build Pricing & Enquiries:

For build and pricing details or to discuss commissioning a custom motorcycle build of your own please email contact@ellaspede.com