When a rough 90s Ducati 900 SS with upgraded suspension appeared on Marketplace at a price too good to ignore, Matt Coulter of Sticky?s Speed Shop jumped in the van. He factored that, with a minor tidy, the Ducati would make the perfect daily runner, with the potential to pull double duty as a track hack. Not a snowball’s chance in hell.
It’s a tale as old as time. A serial builder purchases a new machine, with a faint promise to themselves to keep it stock. But once your eyes recover from the lightning-bolt assault you see before you, and you can see beyond the peacocking paint job, you’ll notice that this Ducati 900 SS is a significant leap beyond ?a minor tidy.?

Matt takes up the story; ?I was approached by Hitchcox, who build custom exhausts. They asked if I was working on any interesting projects that they could collaborate on to promote their ?Design Your Own? exhaust program. I wasn?t, but, I did have ideas brewing for that 900 SS?. The idea that kept fighting its way to the surface" A composite frame; half steel, half aluminum. By way of committing to the project, Matt fired up the grinder and cut the unsuspecting Ducati in two. Hitchcox was on board, and the all too imminent deadline of the 2024 Bike Shed Moto Show was set.

The front section of the frame was despatched to Powder Worx for a swift covering of satin black, while the rear was discarded. The reduced Ducati was then transported to Steelheart Engineering in Kent, where Matt an...