I've lost my Belt Virginity!!!
 

So I've been plucking up the courage to finally get round to doing the holy grail of Ducati ownership - changing the belts - and yesterday was the big day!

After a damn good clean and polish, the Hyper 1100DS engine had a belt and oil change. I have to say that it worked out a lot easier than I thought it would be, having read through and followed quite a few internet guides on doing it.

I now have a lovely sparkling Hyper, the 748 got a wash and polish too and will be getting oil, coolant and belts next!

Gotta love these hot bank holidays for getting bike stuff done :)

They have belts. :eek:

:lol:

most do - after Mallory yours clearly dont ;) :lol:

Unlike Craigs as one of his belts had a mind of its own

Antony the Single cam ones are a doddle, bit more fun when its a Testastretta set up

So - how difficult are belts on a 996? Just read the article in this month's Performance Bikes and it makes it sound pretty straightforward, yet I read a step by step guide on another website which made it sound much more complicated...

In theory it should be no more difficult than the 2V belts, with the exception of the different run of the belt due to the extra cam.

The only difficult bit, imo, is knowing how tight the belt should be!

The guide I used said that it should be tight enough to just run a 5mm allen key between the belt and the tensioner pulley on the horizontal cylinder. I had a practise on the belts before taking them off to get a "fell" of this, and sure enough I couldn't get a 6mm allen key through but I could a 5mm key.

On the vertical you use a 6mm key, and again it felt the same as using a 5mm key on the horizontal.

There's also the "twist" method, where you should be able to twist the belt to a maximum of 45deg at the mid-point between the tensioner and the cam pulley. I also checked this and it seemed fine.

You can also use a sonic method - "strum" the belt and see what frequency it is. The tighter the belt the higher the frequency. Unfortunately I couldn't get consistent results with any of the microphones I could find!

I don't have a tension checker, so couldn't test that.

Having a cam locking tool should make things a lot easier on my 748, and luckily I have quite a few of those knocking about ;)

Easier than a Testastretta

Kev ( Skids ) did my belts on the 996 last weekend. An all I can say is I wont be having a go at that unless I had the freq meter that Kev had to get the belt at the exact tension at every point. Bloody clever stuff. Just like DD has taught me to actually have a go like Ant has done. But belts... hmmmm can I pratice on Bradders bike first rather than my own.

Craig

Is it really necessary to lock the cams? Surely if they move when you take the old belt off, it's just a case of lining the timing marks up again and making sure there are the right no. of teeth between each mark?

Yes, but some of them will be under tension so they don't want to stay in the same place when you let go!