Metal and Rubber: 1970 Ducati 450 Mark 3

A motorcycle is only a compilation of metal and rubber — it takes people to create the memories and stories behind the machine.

For example, the 1970 Ducati 450 Mark 3 seen here has a tale to tell. It starts in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, with Art Cartwright. Art was passionate about motorcycles and he had his father, Herb Cartwright, to thank for that. Herb rode and raced in the 1940s and ’50s, and it was only natural that an interest in machines be passed along. Growing up, Art spent time working on and riding motorcycles, and during his high school years in the mid- to late-1960s, he rode almost year round on a BSA Golden Flash. During the cold and snowy winter months prevalent on the Canadian prairies, a homemade sidecar platform helped Art keep his motorcycle upright.

Art liked all motorcycles, including an Indian Chief he’d inherited from his dad, but he was particularly fond of British and Italian machines. He owned BSA singles including a Gold Star basket case, a Vincent and several Ducati singles. A First Class Journeyman welder, Art ran his own business and then became a Welding Engineering technologist. Passing along his knowledge, Art went on to teach others to weld, first at Red Deer College and then Calgary’s Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. In the early 1970s, Art met his future wife, Renee. “When I met him, he was commuting on motorcycles and building a Model T hot rod with a Studebaker engine,” she says. “That car won me over, and we had fun with it.”

Finding the Ducati 450

Art and Renee married in 1977, and she says they often rode two-up until she bought her own Yamaha 650 in 1978. Not long after that, the couple was driving in North Calgary when Renee spotted a forlorn 450cc Ducati sitting on a front step with a “For Sale” sign. The asking price was $100, and Renee bought it on the spot. “It was filthy,” Renee says, “and I spent hours cleaning it up. After I was through, Art took an interest in it and got it running and back on the road for me.”

Renee continues, “I was drawn to the single-cylinder Ducati because I’m not a big person, and the bike was such a nice size for me. It really was lovely. I could hold it up with my feet flat on the ground, and the weight of the bike was so good. I also found it easy to start, but I have a keen knack for kickstarters.” As an example of Renee’s kickstarting prowess, she adds, “Herb’s running-around bike was a single-cylinder BSA Victor, and neither Herb nor Art could ever really get it easily started. Well, I’d get it to start with a single kick — we’d joke about it all the time because I’m only 110 pounds.”

The Ducati 450 was ridden occasionally by Renee, and by the late 1990s the bike was partially disassembled to put another of the family’s Ducatis back on the road. That machine was a 250cc Scrambler that Art had hopped up with the top end of a 350cc Ducati, and it needed a set of wheels. With the 450’s wheels on the Scrambler, Art and Renee’s then 16-year old son Geoffrey rode the bike to a Vincent Owners Club North American Rally in Washington. After that, Renee’s 450 simply languished in the garage — until Art’s arthritis was preventing him from riding his 1976 Triumph Bonneville.  “Art had bought that Triumph new in ’77,” Renee says, “but he had arthritis in his hips, hands and knees and the Triumph was getting heavy for him. In 2018, he started to put the lighter Ducati 450 back together so he could ride that.”

Art planned to be riding the Ducati in the summer of 2019. He was remarkably close when, just two weeks after his 70th birthday, Art suffered a heart attack and died. While understandably difficult for the family, Renee began the process of working through Art’s collection of machines. Geoffrey got three of them, while new homes were sought for several others. “I had quite a long history with that Ducati and I loved riding it, but I’d given up motorcycles in the early 2000s,” Renee says. “I have regrets about the Ducati being taken apart and not put back together, and it was great Art was working on it when he was, but it needed to go to a new home.”

That’s when Calgary motorcyclist Bob Klassen entered the picture. Bob’s garage is currently home to a number of pre-unit Triumph twins, including a Triton and a 1963 Bonneville. In the past, he’s owned and ridden BMWs, Harley-Davidsons and a few Ducatis, including a Mille S2 and a 916. But for some time, he’d been keen to find an older single-cylinder Ducati. He often rides with a group of friends, a couple of whom do have 250cc Ducati singles. “We’d have conversations about these little Ducatis, and that sort of awakened something I wasn’t even aware I was harboring,” Bob says. In early August 2021 when he heard Renee was selling the Ducati 450, he says, “I was excited to go and see it, and meeting with Renee and Geoffrey and getting the story behind the bike was cool. Physically, what I saw was a Ducati with not a lot of miles (there were just over 8,800 on the odometer), and it had been worked on by someone well-known and respected in the vintage bike community.”

Ducati 450 Restoration

Essentially, Art had started a cosmetic restoration. The frame and just about anything else in black had been freshly powder coated. The 450cc overhead-cam engine, complete with a manifold to hold an Amal 930 carburetor to the intake, was in the frame. The front fork and wheels were in place, and a Scrambler-style tank was atop the machine. Mechanically, the bike looked to be in a condition to run, but the wiring harness was incomplete and no cables had been installed. Art had the makings for cables with inner wire and sheathing new in bags. The seat wasn’t mounted, but it was in good condition. Art had been setting the Ducati up as an around-town runabout and had installed signal lights. While in Renee’s garage, Bob noticed a near mint condition chrome and red coffin-style Ducati single tank sitting on a shelf and negotiated the sale of the tank with the Ducati.

A box of spares, including the correct square-slide Dell’Orto VHB 29 carburetor, a couple of books and six pages of Art’s handwritten notes went with the bike. Reviewing Art’s notes, Bob says it appeared he’d devised a way to rebuild what are considered to be non-rebuildable rear shocks. He’d also had some work done to the stator, noting the original wiring was losing its protective insulation.

With the bike in his own garage, it didn’t take Bob long to make up clutch, throttle and decompressor cables. He removed the signal lights and spent time sorting out the wiring. With a 6-volt sealed lead acid battery in place, Bob familiarized himself with the starting drill. With gasoline fed from a test tank, the Ducati fired right up. “As soon as I got it running,” Bob says, “I had no doubts about getting it through Alberta’s inspection program in order to get it registered, and at that point, I’d like to think I’d brought Art’s vision to the finish line.”

Designing and tweaking

Now, it was Bob’s turn to pay some attention to the Ducati. According to author Ian Falloon in his Standard Catalog of Ducati Motorcycles 1946 – 2005, the 450 Mark 3 was introduced in 1969 but they didn’t reach America until 1970. Falloon notes the 450 Mark 3, distributed by North American importers Berliner in the U.S., was essentially dropped shortly after 1970. The Ducati situation in Canada was somewhat different, as the machines were imported by Montreal-based Franco Romanelli and distributed from there to dealers such as Chariot Cycle Ltd. in Winnipeg. A 1970 catalog from Chariot Cycle lists the 450 Mark 3 for $1,050.

Most of the Mark 3s sent to America had a painted 13.2-liter (3.48-gallon) Scrambler tank, but some did come with the far prettier coffin-style tank. To Bob’s eye, the slightly longer 13.5-liter (3.56-gallon) coffin-style tank that he bought with the bike was much more attractive. It mounted easily in place of the Scrambler tank. Because it was longer, however, it changed the geometry of the seat mounting points, and Bob had to adapt the mounting brackets to make the saddle work with the tank.

“As I became familiar with the Ducati’s characteristics — it’s light [286.3 pounds dry], it’s got a short wheelbase, and that engine has plenty of torque making it a responsive and nimble package — I made a decision to turn it into something in line with its capabilities,” Bob explains. He shaved approximately 14 pounds from the Ducati. The side stand was removed and its mounting plate, which is the left side front engine plate, was replaced with a plain plate. Cast iron foot pegs were taken off and custom alloy rearsets fabricated. To move the right-foot shifter, Bob modified two original shift levers, connecting the two with a linkage rod from another Italian bike project. On the braking side, Bob cut and removed a length of the pedal to make it compatible with the rearset peg position.

While Bob did rebuild and fit the Dell’Orto carburetor, he was never happy with how the bike ran and returned to the modified Amal 930. He did make a new manifold adaptor, though, to bring the carb closer to parallel to the ground — Art’s mount had the carb tilted up at 12-degrees. Bob added several hundred miles to the Ducati during the fall of 2021 but had trouble keeping the battery in a happy state. Without the battery, the points and coil ignition system would quit producing spark and leave him at the side of the road. He suspected the voltage regulator as well as the low-cost sealed lead acid battery were to blame. Some of the battery failure issues could possibly be chalked up to vibration, but Bob says the 450 Ducati doesn’t really vibrate as noticeably as some vintage British twin-cylinders he’s ridden.

In the end, he rectified the problem with an updated voltage regulator and a traditional wet-acid battery. “The bike had a Dunstall silencer on it and I found that to be a bit restrictive above 4,500rpm,” Bob says. In late spring 2022, he ordered a Continental-style megaphone from Feked.com and installed it on the header. “It runs much nicer with that silencer fitted,” he notes. Most recently, to suit Bob’s taller stature, he removed the low rise handlebars and installed café-racer Ace bars to tuck himself closer to the gas tank. “I’m not as upright and it’s a more aerodynamic riding position, and it’s very comfortable for me.”

Since returning Renee and Art Cartwright’s Ducati to the road, Bob’s put close to another 2,000 miles on the CEV speedometer. He’s happy to have been adding more chapters to the evolving story of the Ducati 450 and is convinced the top end has never been off the bike, given the state of the fasteners. Bob plans to soon take it apart to confirm the state of the bore, piston and rings and valves.

Renee appreciates the dedication Bob has shown the little Ducati, and concludes, “I’m so happy it’s found a good home, and that Bob has put his own stamp on that bike. That makes it even more special.” MC

The 450 Mark 3 and the 450 Mark 3 D

Somewhat overshadowed by its twin sibling 450 Mark 3 D (D for Desmo), the 450 Mark 3 is essentially the exact same model, but without the desmodromic overhead valve actuation. Prior to 1969, Ducati offered a number of single-cylinder machines ranging in capacity from 100cc to 350cc. In North America, the most popular sizes were the 250 and 350, and by 1968 Ducati had redesigned the frame of these bikes with twin frame tubes from the backbone down to the swingarm pivot. This necessitated widening the rear of the engine case, and after that alteration, these models are known as “wide case” machines. In 1969, Ducati enlarged the single-cylinder engine to 436cc; the engine could not have gone to 500cc because, as author Ian Fallon notes in his Standard Catalog of Ducati Motorcycles 1946 – 2005, “the 75mm stroke was the largest that could be used with the crankshaft throw missing the gearbox.” This larger engine was first installed in a reinforced 250/350 Scrambler frame, and the street-going 450 Mark 3 and Mark 3 Desmo followed shortly after. Built from 1969 to 1974, in its last years of production (1973-1974), according to Falloon, only 613 of the non-desmo 450 Mark 3 models were produced — with very few of them entering the North American market. In his book Ducati Singles Restoration, writer Mick Walker explains, “Hardly any of the 1971-72 bikes reached either the American or British markets, as both importers (Berliner and Vic Camp, respectively) were in dispute with the Bologna factory over prices.”

Originally published in the March/April 2023 issue of Motorcycle Classics.