The flywheel nut is undone.

Not an easy one man job I have to admit, thats why I asked for help holding the flywheel while the nut was
undone with a breaker bar!
A simple yet irritating job thats awkward if your on your own.

That gunky covered thing in the sprocket well appears to be fibreglass, probably put there as a bodge it fix when the chain snapped, quite what it was meant to achieve there I'm not sure, the only benefit would appear to be muck proofing the cam belt and generator..
I can either extend the metal separator on the crankcase to cover the gap or I can rebuild it with a chemical metal compound, neither will prevent damage if the chain were to break again but it may keep the grime out of the generator area a bit more effectively than loosely packed fibreglass matt held in with congealed chain lube.

Mundane tasks chip away at the whole thing in small chunks, the right crankcase cover was unbolted and the chain was split and removed. My first half hearted attempt to get the flywheel off didn't work, I'll need to wait until I have more time and room to move as the working area is quite cramped and awkward when the bike is fully back in the garage. This weekend I'll be able to get it out a few feet meaning I can get a decent purchase on the flywheel holder while undoing the central nut without trying to balance over a couple of kids bikes.

There was an odd piece of debris(or so I thought around the front sprocket, I pulled it out with pliers, it may be plastic or light alloy I haven't bothered to clean it to find out. but looking at where it came from around the sprocket Looked a bit odd to me, so after a cursory wipe with a paraffin coated rag I notice the castings were rough in a couple of places.

Definitely broken, I've seen this on Ducatis before and its a sure sign to me that the chain has snapped on this bike at some stage in the past, it will have bunched around the sprocket breaking the metal at the front and will have whipped up breaking it directly above the sprocket. On an air cooled Ducati like mine that would have burst the crankcase but fortunately it seems less terminal here. You can get strips of steel that bolt on as protection on the Ducatis but they have convenient bolt holes in that location to attach it to, I think I'll just have to live with this.
Interesting evidence of the bikes history.

The stubborn exhaust nut is finally off.
I tried, releasing fluid, a special spanner, a blowtorch, but finally it got down to brute force and ignorance.
A rummage in dad's old toolchest revealed a couple of old heavy caulking tools,similar to heavy blunt chisels and with a glove under it to protect the alloy in case I slipped I then battered the nut with the hammer and chisel combo until it was off.
The nut is now junk, I did try the other nut in the port working it back and forwards to try and clean up the threads in the alloy cylinder head and it has made a visible difference in the definition of the threads in the port, I revisit this sometime later when its all going back together .

Here are the old nuts the stiff one is the one on the right.

New castle nuts are now on the shopping list.
From here:-
http://www.morinispecial.it/joomla/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=168

I also tried a quick wipe over of the wiring with a paraffin soaked rag and it was like moving from B&W movies to technicolour is one wipe, gone is years of sticky grime. I'll do it more thoroughly in the next few days.

A week or so spent pulling bits off the bike has resulted in this.

The next stage would be to remove the engine from the frame but until I can remove that header pipe that'll have to wait.
There's a castellated nut made from relatively soft bronze holding the header pipe to the cylinder head and it wont move, even with a specialist spanner bought specifically for this job. I've just tried Plusgas penetrating fluid on it and will persevere for a bit but if it doesn't look like there's any progress there then it may have to be partly destroyed to get it off.
I've found a firm in Italy that sells new ones at about £40 for a pair.

I'm still trying to work out which version of the wiring I have, not helped by it all being so coated in grime that most of the wires are just shades of black. A bit of cleaning there may make it clearer.
At least some of the components like the coils and reg/rec box look new, so someone has rewired part of it in the near past.

I've decided that after I get the existing powdercoat removed from the frame I wont be redoing it, I think paint will give me a nicer finish,if not as durable. I may or may not do this myself. I think it ought to be black too.
The wheels will definitely need repainted, I'll probably get them done in a paint shop. 'Skoda Donington grey' is the paint colour that matches the original colour so I'm told.

The engine number appeared out of the muck on the back of the crankcase, apparently put there by the importer as the factory didn't bother to stamp them and it's a legal requirement in the UK.

The tape around the headlight was holding it together as I suspected, however it wasn't as bad as it could have been, the only things missing were two small nuts and bolts. I cobbled some together for the moment and will fix it properly in due course.