[zhed44]

UPDATE:

Ducati UK agreed to pay for 50% of the cost of the rockers. I also pressed hard for a contribution towards the labour for fitting them, but they wouldn't budge. It's better than a slap in the face with a wet fish I suppose, but it still leaves me about £250 out of pocket (£175 parts + 1.5 hours(?) labour).

IMHO, given that Ducatis are a high-end product with a loyal following, when it became clear this was a manufacturing defect and/or serious quality control issue, the company should really have done the right thing (or more cynically, engaged in PR damage limitation) by instructing service centres to replace any defective rockers FOC on bikes with a FSH as and when the bikes were presented for servicing. This would have avoided a lot of ill-feeling from within the customer base, and would have gone some way to reducing the damage done externally, in the wider marketplace, by the infamous Ducati reputation for unreliability. When you consider how many potential Ducati owners worldwide have probably been put off the brand for life (ie: have spent millions of pounds with rival companies) as a result of rumours about their fragility (for various reasons) or because of a bad experience, changing a few thousand parts every year which probably only cost a couple of quid each to manufacture would seem to me to be a bit of a no-brainer.