More rockers
 

Having been told I need 6 new rockers, and being a tight Jock, has anyone used 2nd hand replacements? On Ebay Ducatisparesonline have them at c.£35 'beginning to show minimal signs of wear' which I dont like the sound of. Dukedemon do them at c.£67 which seems a bit close to the new prices to be worth it.

TIA

Iain C.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oh sorry I meant NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

and the £67 may well be the old part number, whatever you do make sure you get a batch with the latest part number on as they have changed so many times ......

This is not somewhere you can scrimp unfortunately ..... as my wallet will testify ....

As the saying goes

"Buy cheap, buy twice"

Hmmm, does go along with my gut feeling, though I'm sure I read about someone on here who had bought a 748/916 top end purely to stock up on rockers.
BTW the dealer would be doing direct replacements for the serials on the damaged rockers. Is there a range of part numbers that are definitely dodgy?

Cheers.

Why cant they be refaced with harder material,would it cost more than new ones?

Makes you wonder why some aftermarket performance guru hasn't sorted out their own rocker design by now.

After all Martin Brickwood Performance (MBP) of testarossa head fame have gone to the trouble of designing uprated valve guides and collets, it seems only a small step for someone to produce some bullet proof rockers or an improved lubrication system using seperate lines for the rocker oilways (maybe using an electric pump that primes with the ignition switch on, to get oil to the rockers before the engine even turns over)

Testarossa heads? Ferrari heads? (excuse my ignorance ..)

Not testastretta heads?

Martin Brickwood performance

http://www.mbpducati.ca/

:)Crust

Megacycle will replate your rockers and i believe there is somewhere in germany that will do it as well. No cheaper then new ones though but i guess they will last.

Ahh .. now I remember where I've seen those heads before.

:(

Can you not get Ducati UK to replace them?

I think it's their responsibility after all if the parts aren't up to the job.

indeed :(

I bought a set of heads barrels and pistons from a bike that had it's bottom end destroyed after only 1500 miles.

My original plan was to swap the heads completely after a bit of re-working, however they're not a straight swap between the later 748 and the earlier, so I stripped it for rockers. I had to replace all of mine at 16K (in Feb), and paid less than £200 for the heads etc so it made sense to me, and the heads came from a very late model 748. The rockers that came out of the new heads looked exactly as they should with no signs of imminent failure, and that's as good as I can expect for £200.

Whilst it was stripped I had the whole top end refurbished, which I couldn't have afforded had I needed to replace all the rockers at full price.

MBP do an exchange service for replating at $45 each, and you're probably looking at a 4 week turnaround since they have to cross the atlantic twice. I think MegaCycle charge around $80 per rocker but they grind down and build up with a harder material, again delivery time's the issues

On a personal note, I always feel DukeDemon's prices are a little too rich for used parts.

You COULD buy rockers from the USA... over there Ducati North America sell them for $45 ..infact no sorry they recently went up in price to $54 :o
So pretty much you get three for the price of one, here in the good old UK!!

Gav

Erse biscuit!

dukess1999 - Iain - sound familiar?

Put down the crack pipe and walk away!!!

sorry to har you need six. it happens to us all at some time. out of interest are they all openers or are any closers damaged? i took a different route, when i found out the cost of new rockers and nearly fell over! i read up on the subject ,every body told me that ducati outsourced the plating in 96-97 so i looked around and found a pair of heads with a 95 date stamp, paid a lot of money for them i might add. but worked out the same as the five new ones i needed. the rockers had done 6,500 miles and were in as new condition, i also got spare cams,valves, shims. i checked them again recently, paranoia creeping in ! and they are still as new. maybe this is the way to go with your problem. the chroming does look better quality on the 95 rockers. if you need any closers,i might be able to help you out.

I had three openers worn at about 2000 miles on my SPS. Both horizontal openers and the vertical opener further from the oil feed.

Despite a lot of wear they were replated by MBP for USD 45 each. Took a while to get them back, but I think Guy was ill at the time. I would recommend using him, since the plating he has done is supposed to be tougher than even the latest Ducati attempts.

Mike

Thanks for all the answers - Gav, I tried Section 8 but they didn't have 3 of the openers in stock. I'll try some of the other Yankee shops.

Sheeny, they were 5 openers and 1 closer. My 748 is '95 but it has SPS heads which were fitted a fair bit later. I think I've got the closer sorted out but thanks for the offer.

Ive got a selection of brand new genuine rockers..U2U me and ill see if I can help..part numbers would be helpful mate..

Cheers
Nat