Craig Rodsmith is a motorcycle builder and artist extraordinaire, with numerous awesome creations under his belt. At Mama Tried, he introduced us to his custom ’97 Ducati M900 Monster. It’s our Ride of the Week!
The following is a transcript of the conversation seen above.
Jacqui Van Ham: Hey there, Motorcycle and Powersports News. This is Jacqui Van Ham here at the Mama Tried custom bike show in Milwaukee. This awesome Ducati is going to be your Ride of the Week.
Thank you so much, Craig Rodsmith — the legendary, the iconic, the infamous, the notorious.
Craig Rodsmith: Infamous I like.
JVH: Craig, thank you so much for taking the time to talk us through one of your two awesome bikes that are on display here this weekend. Can you go ahead and talk us through the nuts and bolts of this bike and let’s go ahead and start with the engine.
CR: This was my everyday rider. It’s a ‘97 Ducati M900 Monster and I had a leaking fork seal, so I decided I was going to fix the leaking fork seal. Now, the only thing left with the original bike is the engine and I put a 998 frame, single side swing arm on it. I supercharged it and made some handmade aluminum body work, which I kind of do occasionally. I put nitrous oxide on it too, and now it’s going to be my everyday rider, a very fast everyday rider.
JVH: One of your signatures is going to be, for those of you that are not familiar with Craig Rodsmith, the notorious Craig Rodsmith, one of your signatures is a ton of metal polishing, which you clearly really enjoy. All of your bikes for the most part, I think, are all alloy. I don’t think you even have a painted bike in your body of work.
CR: I have another bike here and the customer wanted the frame blue, which I fought against, but you know, he was paying the bill, so I had to do a blue frame, but it’s got a lot of polished aluminum.
JVH: All of this body work is so beautiful. The finish is so high quality. It looks like factory. How long does this take?
CR: I really don’t like to think about that. I guess, well this is actually the second tank that I made because the first tank I had about 120 hours into and it just wasn’t right, so I smashed it with a hammer and started again and made this one. I suppose the tank, I don’t know, 80 to 100 hours in the tank and the fairing has maybe 50 hours. I’m getting tired just thinking about how many hours I had in it.
JVH: Well, before I exhaust you let’s go ahead and discuss some of the other kind of features on this bike. You’ve obviously done some very high performance features on this machine. What else is going on with this?
CR: Well, I’ve got Kineo wheels, which are these amazing Italian spoke wheels that you can run tubeless tires with, which I just love. They’re so light. I mean, this it’s a pretty bike, but it’s actually meant to be ridden. So it’s light as heck. It’s a lot of fun to ride, but I have never hit the nitrous button yet. So I’m looking forward to that when it warms up here in the Midwest.
JVH: Thank you so much, Craig Rodsmith, for talking us through this excellent custom Ducati, and it’s your Ride of the Week!
