So freshly delivered to the shed, this Ducati Desert Sled.
We've been trying to find a bike big enough for Gareth to ride around on because his legs
are too long, and this has finally turned up, G what's your first impression?
Well, Ducati and scrambler are like my two favourite things about bikes, so when they
said they were going to make a scrambler, I was really excited.
But the first one didn't feel like a scrambler to me, and now...
It probably felt like a tonka toy to you as well...
It was tiny, but the Desert Sled finally feels like they've made what they said they were
gunna do years ago, and made a Ducati Scrambler.
Haven ridden it for a weekend, 500 miles in a weekend on all sorts of different terrain,
I love it, it ticks all the boxes of all the things you want it to do.
Road miles, off-road miles, and as a bigger guy the proportions of it are fantastic.
The seat height is, .. I think 8 centimetres taller than the standard one, which is a huge
chunk.
And all of the changes they've made to the frame and everything, it's just, it's a grown-up
bike.
I mean I took this out on the launch, I was lucky enough to ride it in the desert in Spain.
And we had to follow this guy around who had apparently done the Dakar a whole bunch of
times and I should have known who he was... but I didn't.
Certainly they wern't scared of taking us into dried out river beds and gulleys and
we did some proper sort of scramblery, dirt bike type stuff on it.
And it worked, I mean it's been beefed up a lot hasn't it.
Do you want to point out some of the areas where this bike has been given the full on
man treatment?
So the biggest difference, the standard bike the frames sort of ends here, and the swing
arm mounts of the back of the engine.
But now you've got the frame, extends all the way down here, so this whole section is
new purpose for the Desert Sled, and the swing arm mounts off the frame as opposed to the
back of the engine.
It's all beefed up, the swingarm is longer, the forks have got I think a full 5 centimetres
more travel than the standard version, so it's kind of just been beefed up and made
fit for purpose really, and the purpose being that you can take it where ever you want to
go.
What I also love though, one click glance and it looks like an XT500 doesn't it.
Gold rims, the tank, the kind of colouring of the side panels.
It, it properly says it's an off-road bike, I mean my garage I've got a Cagiva Grand Canyon,
and a Honda dominator.
So off-road adventure bikes are my thing, and this kind of feels like it's got the best
of both worlds.
You've got the power of the big twin, it's a bit heavier than the standard scrambler
as you'd expect with all the extra metal and size, but it's....
You can still chuck it around, it's incredibly thin and narrow it feels like you're on a
dirt bike.
When you're riding down a country lane and you see a dirty, muddy bit and you think oh
can I give that a go?
You absolutely can.
The bikes capability is far beyond my own, and go play silly buggers in the mud with
it.
So you did a bit of green laning on it.
Saw you doing a few skids.
I turned off the ABS, there's a bunch of complicated number combinations which can turn off the
ABS.
And then yeah, you can stand on the pegs, for me I'd need the bars a little taller.
But you can properly stand on the pegs and go for it offroad, I mean I'm no dakar hero,
but you could go for it and it gave you confidence, the off-road confidence it gives you, reflects
on to the road so you can really chuck it around.
It's got a 19 inch front, where as the old ones had 17 inch wheels, so you've kind of
got a bit more, um, height to get over all the obstacles from the wheel.
We just pushed it straight down the steps into here, didn't need a ramp!
No ramp required that's always a good sign.
You've got the bashplate under there, and alloy bash plate.
You've probably got a better choice of rubber as well, with that rim combination if you're
looking for knobbly tires.
You can go proper knobbly with it, but these were custom made by Pirelli, yeah Pirelli
for the bike.
So these were made for the Sled, they certainly work well I mean we took the Sleds out on
the tarmac and we rode them on the motorway, to get to bits of Desert and actually at no
point did I think I'm on a dodgy off-road bike, this wont go quick on the motorway.
It was really good.
That's the thing about it, you kinda go, it can do everything.
It can get you to where you're going and then, proportion wise...
I mean it fits you, I mean how tall are you?
I'm 6ft 4.
And I'm all legs so it's kind of, that's me stood up on it and it fits!
Which is always a good start isn't it.
So if we had this for a bit longer than another couple of weeks, what else would you do?
That's the big question.
The pipe.
It needs a high pipe, it's a scrambler, and also my foot has a bit of an interface here
with the pipe so SC Projects do a lovely high pipe, so I'd pop that on.
Also it could do with a bit more noise.
So you'd get that as well.
There's quite a lot of plastic, there's lots of coverings sort of around the radiator here,
and around the headstock.
I'd be quite up for losing some of that and also on the engine you've got quite a few
sort of... you can tell the designers have got carried away with the crayons, and there
is a lot of details that I kind of want to strip back a bit and make it a bit more of
a sort of.
you just want to simplify it.
Just see how much you can take off and leave a big box in the attic that can follow you
around when you move house for the next three or four years.
Just see how much weight you can take off it.
They do nice tail tidies and they do do nice pipes for this, there's a few bits in the
catalogue that are worth looking at.
The...... the scrambler cafe racer that they do, has a really cool side panel that's like
an oval number board, a lot like the old XT.
Would be interesting to see if you could fit those to it and then get the seat with a slightly
flatter line with the oval number board.
I'd probably also put a square off-road headlight on it, really up the off-road credentials
in the visual.
But it doesn't need much!
It looks great straight out the bat.
So you're happy?
Yeah enjoyed it a lot.
So as it is, it works, but if it was a keeper full of promise.
You could have a lot of fun tinkering with things on it.
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