[Yorkie]

I also have a white framed '92 900ss so I can possibly shine a light on some things to look at. First take a really close look at the frame tubes around the headstock as they crack and were the cause of a huge number of frame swaps by Ducati.

The carbs on these things are crap and the devoted fork out for flat slide FCR41 carbs to eliminate the sluggish throttle response. If the bike has not been run in a while then expect a really thorough carb rebuild including all jets as the motor tends to make the jet orifices oval. Factory Pro makes very good kits.

The aluminum crank plug tends to back out on some of these and the only way to check is to drain the oil. It does not result in a catastrophic failure but tends to shave off metal over time.

The head studs are divlar and tend to break on early motors. They are really hard to remove. You check by simply rotating the nuts on the cylinder heads.

Other than that they are wonderful. You can buy a project for about $1500, a good runner with service history and under 20K miles should be $3-4K and Super Lights head off into the $5-$10K territory. CRs are quite a bit cheaper as they do not have the full fairings, forks are non-adjustable and I think the swing arm is steel. For a point of reference my super clean and totally stock white frame with 13K miles BUT unused for many years was $3K. I have had to replace the tires, belts (a must but only $80 from CA Cycle) and battery.