A creative but welcome stretch to slide into the "feline" category!

That is a great Du-Cat-i . Wonderful Italian motorbikes.

Nice one Halvar, also nice HD Louis.

I would expect nothing less from tamiya! I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with this mate. Have you built a bike before?
This kit is on my list of ones to do before I die! But my plan is to convert it to a race bike.
I see Ducati have just unveiled their final panigale R, and have announced they will be developing four cylinder bikes...

With the Sukhoi waiting for my usual clear coat blues to go away, I had some time to start with the engine of the Du-cat-i.

Given that this kit was released 20 years ago, the moulding quality is quite impressing. Like in reality, the crank case of the model is divided vertically. Unlike in reality, however, the cylinders are casted in one piece with the crank case meaning that the connection surfaces to intake and exhaust system need some attention to be levelled properly.

The clutch actuator was neglected entirely by the kit designers and the according hydraulic line is attached to a horizontal pin perpendicular to the longitunal axis of the bike. Not good. A scratch built actuator solved the problem.

This kit has many high points, e.g. the Ducati letters at different places of the engine, but the whole airbox and intake system was not Tamiyas finest hour. Especially the injectors are rather a product of phantasy. Removing the locator pins made sure that the connection plates could be thinned down to a more realistic size and some scratch building of the fuel hoses and electric plugs will hopefully make the whole area look reasonably busy.

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

One major take-aways of my last post: don't call it a summer too early.

Tamiya offers a one part design of the rear shock absorber with an additional part for the external oil reservoir. Unfortunately connecting these would require major gluing operations of parts already painted and also the entire thing is covered with numerous ejector pin marks. I therefore cut off the original piston rod and replaced it with some styrene. Upper and lower part could now be cleaned up, built and painted separately and they eventually came together by connecting them with the rod.
Another weak part of the kit is the chain cover. It's way too thick, the brake line is clumsily moulded onto it (resulting in a semicircular shape) and the connectors to the vinyl tube representation of the brake line are out of position. I removed all that, sanded the cover down to about half the size and replaced the brake line with a scratch built one.
Major time and effort was invested to paint the fantastic chain and sprocket part. Though the hub and and the sprocket both look kind of silverish, in reality they are made of aluminum and plated steel which I tried to represent with different paints and clear coats.

14 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thanks, Morne.
Yes, that's the liquid mask product from Microscale. I like the fact that it's water-soluble.