Loving LEV!

Our Pip rescues and restores a famous Ducati Daytona. Here’s the tale in his inimitable words.

- Pip Higham

When I was a lad,I bought a crashed Ariel Leader from one-legged, briar-pipe smoking Billy Briggs (Motorcycles) in Salford for 40 quid.

I straightened out the forks and fiddled around with it, but as my 16th birthday approached I could see my dad getting a bit edgy. He thought I was going to go and run into the first solid object I encountered on two wheels. On the first Saturday after my birthday (and still with a full complement of working limbs) he dragged me to King’s on Stretford Road to look at NEW bikes! There were Hondas, Yams and rather a long line of Ducatis. I was quite taken with the little Dukes and at just over £200 they were very appealing but I eventually succumbed to the meticulous Honda-ness of the CB160.

Its little blue tool roll and sweet controls were hard to resist: it was so damn cute. I can also remember at the end of the row of shiny bronze and chrome (thin chrome, mind) Ducati Elites were a couple of Daytonas, with sit-up bars, looking undeniably smart, but all I wanted to do was fiddle with the switches on the 160 and weigh up how long it would take me to whip out the baffles.

Moving on a few years and I happened across a black Daytona bearing the registration LEV 80C. The history with it said it had been thrashed by several bike journos who’d tested it for Motor Cycle and Motorcycle Mechanics, back in the day. I had to buy it and it’s now back to exactly as it was intended to be, but how did I make it so?

Rejuvenating LEV 80C