The First Gear Cam Drive Ducati
The new Ducati 1199 Superbike, due to be unveiled to the public at this November’s EICMA show in Milan, will be an inflection point for Ducati. A number of Ducati signature elements will be abandoned not least cam belt drive as the 1199 will have its cams driven by gears. The change will make for a better race bike and it is in some pretty obscure race bikes that Ducati first used gear cam drive more than 50 years ago.
Although until the advent of the bevel gear drive 750GT L-twin Ducati was associated with bevel driven valve spring and desmodromic singles, the company had dabbled in parallel twins and even the inline four cylinder model depicted in the opening photo.
Assuming more is better, Taglioni built a few 125cc parallel twins for racing purposes that featured cam drive by a train of spur gears driven off of a jackshaft. The twins were never really competitive. Noting this limitation, Taglioni designed this double overhead cam, 4 valve per cylinder, valve spring inline 4 cylinder 125 GP racer in 1958. The cams were driven by a chain of gears on the left side of the engine.
Advanced at the time, Ducati withdrew from racing at the end of the following year so it sat around until demand from the Spanish affiliate resurrected the project 5 years later. By now the design was out of date in many areas and even with more work, power was only 24 bhp at 16,000rpm. Just two bikes were built and they were never raced. The bike in the photographs is now the only example of Ducati’s 125cc 4 cylinder Grand Prix bike. The bike utilized an 8 speed gearbox and weighed 85kg (187lb).
Prior to its purchase and subsequent restoration the motor had found its way to Latvia and the frame to Yugoslavia! Photographed in Pesaro, Italy by Phil Aynsley at the Morbidelli Museum.
Photographs with permission from Phil Aynsley
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