Only if you have a Ducati 916

One of the main ideas of the blog was to share my fix and to help others. As my bike has a couple of fix,s on hold.
One is I want to stop the yellow wires from the stator burning which seems to be a common problem on my bike and many others. To try and stop it I have ordered a mosfat r/r to upgrade the regulator rectifier. I also think the connectors are at fault and have ordered some new ones that are water tight.
I also ordered a new clock surround as mine has aged. The light bleeds from the green neutral display into the low orange petrol light. Also waiting on good weather. Without a garage working outside in this weather is not kind.

While I am on hold is there any Ducati 916 out there that you are having problems with or want to suggest a blog update.
Vinny

Oil leaks on a Ducati 916 bp

Its a pet hate to have oil leaks on new bikes. I guess it was common on older machines that maybe were not serviced well or the technology let them down. On the Ducati as I pulled up I noticed that there was a few drops of oil and when checking the level it needed about 400ml of oil. I have never had to top up the oil since I have owned the bike. On starting the bike I took the fairings off and looked around. On closer inspection working from following the oil leak on the exhaust up the engine i found the leak. It was on the oil pressure hose attached to the oil cooler. Leaving the bike on tick over there was a gentle increase of oil leaking from the gauze area that joins onto the pipe that is screwed on.
A quick post on Ducatsti and no others had the same issue. I also wanted to see if it was related to oil pressure or any other problems. Not a good idea to search for more problems..
A call to the Ducati dealer quoted £125 for a new replacement and not in stock. ebay sellers wanted £40 with no guarntee that they were ok.
A quick search on the internet and I remember wanting to start a pirtek franchise which carry out a hose repair service. I called the local www.pirtek.co.uk in Mitcham and Kenny suggested to bring the hose down to the depot. He pointed out the clip that surrounded the hose was cracked. I had not noticed this. He found a replacement crimp, placed the hose on the machine and charged me £6. I was so impressed I gave him a tip and explained that he had saved me a lot of money.
The picture below is the pipe on the bike and originally the crimps were a short golden colour the new one is longer but with the fairings on will not be seen.
Vinnychoff

Ducati common electrical problem Rectifier wires

Its not nice to have issues especially if they are a known problem. On the Ducati the two wires from the mag (stator) supply two wires to the rectifier. I had issues with mine and fitted a rectifier off a suzuki tl1000. This has worked fine and only today I had a leak of oil which I will explain in another post. I stripped the fairings off and had to disconnect the rectifier to get to the oil pressure pipes. When I disconnected I could see in the block connecter that it had started to burn out. I have read that the wires from the engine are not man enough for the job and need to be larger wires so there is less resistance passing. This causes it to heat up and the pictures below are good compared to my previous and some I have seen on the net. A further search on the net and there are a lot of bikes that are affected by RR issues of either over charging or under charging. There is also talk of the RR over heating and that in the later models the fairings have larger vents and the RR are upped on amperage. The heat issue could be correct as the first picture shows a blob of shiny solder. I only noticed this on cleaning the connecter. The current passing through must have been so hot it melted the solder so that it dripped out as in the picture. Something I have to consider in what happens next.

Vinnychoff

 Two yellow wires from the engine. If you look close you can see what looks like solder. This is the start of it burning out.

The rectifier side is good but the connecter is starting to blacken.

36899 miles on the Ducati 916 bp

A pet hate is to pull up and see oil drips under a car or bike. This started to happen on the bike. I also noticed i had used 500ml of oil in the last couple of thousand miles. This seemed strange as it had not used oil before. A discussion with a mechanic and talk of piston wear or my thoughts originally was the breather was blocked and the oil was blowing out of the breather. A thorough clean and trying to trace the oil leak. I cleaned above the exhaust where it seemed to be leaking on....Then with the fairings off and the bike ticking over. I found the leak. From the oil filter cooler the top hose where the union joins with the guaze was leaking. With the bike ticking over after a few minutes, I cleaned the leak and it re appeared. This made me happy as a new pipe is easier to replace then pistons...
If you do suffer a leak...have patience.
regards Vinnychoff

bulb holder on the 916 for neutral, low fuel, indicator, high beam and low petrol.

I noticed the light was always on the low fuel light on the dash lights. After taking out the tank sender unit and cleaning it with Harry. The unit seemed to work ok. When i put the tank back on the bike and in gear. The light still stayed on. After a few miles the light for the low fuel switched off as it should but i could still see in neutral that the fuel light was still on but not as bright as it normally was. Below you can see the reason why. the plastic has melted and allowed for the light when in neutral to bleed into the other bulb light.
A new or second hand one is needed.
Vinnychoff

Ducati 916 bp sprockets and chain replaced

Below is a picture of the rear sprocket removed from the carrier and bike. You can see it is not like many other sprockets fitted to bikes. It took me a little while to source the correct sprockets for my bike and I believe part of that is the way the rear sprocket is different to the normal sprockets and probably that there are many manufacturers out there that do their own way of holding the sprocket onto a carrier. Renthal are some of the makes I have come across. It does make it hard to source the sprockets as there are less making them for the Ducati 916 bp.

How to adjust showa suspension on a Ducati 916

Suspension has to be right and if you follow motogp then you will understand that a lot of money and time is spent at each track fine tuning.
On the road then this is the same.
I started by moving all the pre load settings to standard as a benchmark. You could make a note of yours and then return back to the settings if you feel you have made a error.
so what are you looking for
me a soft ride that the bike rides over the bumps not skips or jumps.
accelerate and the back end should not sag or drop under acceleration
this will also help with any posture as i felt the suspension was too hard and my back was jolting on the bumps.