24 month service
 

Whats the 24 month service gonna cost me? bike's done 2500 miles..........

Mine was done at Italia Moto in Lincoln for £328 inc vat. Included belts, brake fluid swap and all other normal service stuff.

Great guys who are enthusiastic about Ducati's.

Mate had his 749 done for 2 yr service at Italia recently and it was £634 (incl VAT I think). How come the bg difference?

Mine was a straight forward service with nothing else needed. The service did include belts, brake fluid, coolant and all other service items, test ride, emission test and set up etc etc ..... maybe they like my smile :D

ducati manchester do 6000 mile service at £447 on their web site. (749-999).

I know this was discussed a while back and there was a wide range of prices quoted. I don't understand really, Ducati dealers area ll suppsoed to be charging the same and I beleive it's a 10 hour service (at £35 last time I asked) plsu the parts. The parts should be oil plus filter (£30?), petrol filter and O-ring (£25?), belts (£100?), fork oil (supposed to be changed at 2 years), plus an unknown number of replacement shims for the valve clearances. I make that about £500 plus, and that might be plus VAT. £447 plus shims and VAT I could beleive, but £328 incl seems too good to be true.

Of course I am keen to know too, because my 749S is overdue now for 2 year service and I am struggling to afford it at moment. :puzzled:

I had my forks reworked last year, so thats off the list.

Do they take the heads off to do the valve shims? i could have a bit of porting done...........and the cams timed correctly when they do the belts........not that i need any more grunt really, but............:devil:

Erm ... no. :) The belts will deteriorate with age, regardless of whether you run the engine or not. I have a mate with a '97 916 and he'd not managed to get out on his bike for an entire year (workaholic!), so it needed a major service before being ridden. Fortunately he had the sense to get it fetched in a van rather than ride it in because after 3 years the belts were crazed and perished.

Having said that, it doesn't get to 2 years then suddenly fall apart either. They do that pretty much continuously anyway! (joke - I think).

:burn:

[Edited on 21-11-2005 by HW]

Get it up ti Neil at Cornerspeed you know it makes sense;)

Chris.:burn:

Possibly because the valve shim clearances needed adjusting.For a bike with 2.5K on the clock it should be just a matter of checking them.'Stretta motors are a bitch to work on,and time consuming,if the shims need changing.

Don't forget Andy's bike is a 999R.

Ducati have a "book" time for service but I would have thought that dealers can set their own per hour labour rate. An R should have belts every 12 months or 6k miles whichever is the sooner.

I would be very surprised if shimming is needed. The motor in my bike didn't need any at 9k miles.

One advantage of the current engine is that it is relatively easy to dial the cams (vernier cam pulleys?) to produce the engine charateristics you want, i.e. big top end power or big low to mid range pull.

Choose yer fave dealer or specialist, some might have some offers on at this time of year or just after xmas to keep the workshop busy.

Some workshops might be full of pesky budget racers AKA DD bikes, a good 'shop will just leave these outside if they know a proper bike like an R needs the space!! :o:P:lol:

Ray.

You'll be surprised to hear then that most of the shims on my mate's 749 needed replacing on his 2 year service!

HW,

Gulp!

There are a number of reasons for the clearances to be out of tolerance maybe I was just lucky or ................

Were the rockers OK?

The stretta motors don't tend to wear rockers/shims in normal circumstances...................maybe Ducati haven't laid that ghost to rest after all.

Ray

Have you had any rockers replaced in yours Ray?

'blimey Andy - thats 100 miles a month - are you sure you like that bike :puzzled::o;):lol:

TP,

Nope, no rockers and no shims needed as part of a service at 9k miles/3years and before Henners says any thing I've been playing catch up 'cos the previous owner only put 1.7k miles on it in the first year!

I got a full listing of the clearances as part of the service report.

Ray

Well that's good news. I've never heard of any testastretta engines having rocker issues before, I thought I'd left those behind for now :)

The rocker issue is not so much "which engine" but more "when were they manufactured/fitted".

There is a tech article on Sigma's website that explains it (I think), but the gist of it is that during a period in the 90's when Ducati were trying to cut some costs they sub contracted out the hard chroming of the rockers. They subsequently discovered that the chroming was not up to standard and was prone to flaking causing increased cam wear. Ducati then stopped outsourcing and did the job themselves in house. They will retrofit where they find a problem and any new rockers will be OK (in that respect). Of course, all Testestretta engineed bikes will have new(ish) rockers so should not be an issue (not the same issue anyway!).

I don't know why that bike needed so many - although I have a suspsicion that it was not an Italia bike originally. I would be surprised too if a new bike came from them, and then needed that many doing at service. It's not like it's had a particularly hard life either - well looked after.

TP,

I thought that was the case as well. I thought that better/quicker lubrication at startup on the 'stretta engines had pretty much sorted the flaky rocker issue.

I haven't heard of any probs with 'stretta bikes until HW mentioned his mates 749.
HW said the shims all needed replacement but that could be down to something other than big wear on the rockers due to the "known problem" HW didn't say the rockers needed replacing, just the shims so I still reckon the stretta motors are OK.

Ray.

I thought the rocker design was also different in the testastretta heads?

That's right Tony, they needed adjusting (hence shim replacement) not a case of worn/flaking rockers. Most of them needed it, not all.

Not sure that the rocker design is different, but I think they hold the oil better around the rockers than the older type of head.

Read about rockers here

Its actually not 24 months old until next April...........:P so that makes it 131 per month! but Unlike a crappy old Honda, i dont use it during the winter say oct to mar, so thats now 192 miles per month at trackdays.........oh and i do like it!

Bring yer jap thingy along, (whatever youve changed to) say jerez in april next year, it would be quite cheap for you no flights, transport etc........... i could show you how good it is! :D

Tony, my stretta engine has done 15,000 miles and no sign of any rocker problems (fingers crossed, touch wood etc;))
so hopefully that problem has been laid to rest.

2yr service should be £450 give or take £50..yours should be lower cos of the miles/condition( aint gonna be any seized bolts etc),,,plus you could plant some evidence and get a bigger discount????YOU SLAAAAAAAG!

although there are tolerances on the shim clearances, some dealers still like to work to their own, slightly tighter ones, closer to the lower limits and will adjust to these if they think it necesary/beneficial :)
'strettas do seem to hold their clearances better.

as for rockers, the older 4V's will still flake the "new improved" items, if abused and i've seen a couple of 'stretta ones let go to, although they are very rare.

Look after them like the old 4V is my advice ;)

Thanks for the info and warnings Neil.

Are rockers under warranty?