Why, oh why do Italian bikes and bodgers go together so well?

Seeing that the weather was nice and I'm still convertible-deprived, I
decided that I may as well get my arse into the garage and get working
on the Ducati again. There isn't that much left to do, mainly a bit of
paint touching in where the original paint has made a bid for freedom.
Oh, and fitting a new twistgrip as the eighties-tastic foam grip had
worn through to the plastic grip and was looking awful.

Thanks to the wonders of ebay I managed to get an set of OEM rubber
grips so it should be a matter of minutes to sort this out, right?

lhs grip went on without a hitch, as it should be. As I also lost the
bar-end mounted mirrors at the same time I had to move the switch block
a bit further out which will hopefully improve the riding position.
Well, somewhat.

On to the other grip then. A bit of persuation undoes the screws
holding together the switch block, old grip unhooked, new one hooked
back in. Although I must say that it did feel a bit resistant when I
hooked it in.

And the effing switch wouldn't go back together. So I carefully
re-routed an internal cable or two, without sucess. Closer inspecting
of the old and the new grip showed that on the old switch, some bodger
had filed away part of the 'hump' that holds the throttle cable, thus
allowing the grip to turn a bit further. Which of course stopped the
hump colliding with the switch internals. And the reason it wouldn't go
back together is because the fucknugget that put the 40mm Dell'Ortos on
the bike didn't use the proper throttle cable - the 40mm is a bit
longer, according to the guys on the appropriate mailing list. And no,
it wasn't me who fitted the Dell'Ortos. Just in case you were, like,
wondering.

So while I'm not search searching for the correct cable I figured I
start touching in the paint.

At which point I noticed that someone's partially resprayed at least
one sidepanel (carefully avoiding the decals on the centre - well, not
so carefully as the tiger's head looks a bit worse for wear) and the
touch-up paint matches the respray almost perfectly, but not the colour
on the duck's tail.

Which, at closer inspection, *also* looks like it's been resprayed as
the "Darmah" logos on the sides of the tail have been brush painted on.
And that would explain why that coat of paint seems to be peeling all
over the place. Not to mention that once you start sanding around the
areas where the paint's chipped off, the blue coat further down again
is pretty much a perfect match on the touch-up paint that was mixed by
RS bike paint. Grmbl. I'm feeling another "Paging Beav" coming on.

Why oh why do most of my purchases of nicer bikes turn into
restorations far too soon?