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Monster engine test fit

Well, dimensionally speaking, I’ve proven it’s possible. But practical? Desirable? Those remain unanswered questions.

There certainly isn’t much room to spare. Squeezing the fully assembled engine between the frame tubes was a challenging 3-D puzzle that took me several hours to solve. I was on the verge of giving up several times. Pro Tip: you must remove the upper rocker cover and the oil filter. It would have been a relative breeze without the rear cylinder studs in place, but they wouldn’t budge, despite multiple applications of PB Blaster and umpteen ugga-duggas with a pneumatic impact wrench.

My impetus was simply to make some room in my shop by getting the the Ducati motor off its furniture dolly and out from underfoot. However, I was also curious how the result would look. I assumed that getting to see it in place would boost my motivation to get busy on this project. In reality, not so much. The mounting points are do-able. The chain run is reasonable. But all I could think that whole time was that lopping a cylinder head off a Monster 620 creates the fattest pig of a 309cc engine imaginable. The result I’d end up with doesn’t seem worth the effort.