Oil Change: Debris in Oil - Pics: Opinions Please
 

Here are 2 pics of the contents of my old oil.



That one is the sump plug and the stuff that came out at the same time. The sump plug had a fair amount of swarf on it. The small grey curved debris looks and feels like rubber or soft flexible plastic. There was also a small orangey/brown hard plastic thing that looked like a fragment of bakelite (not sure if it can be seen in the photo). It looks like a quarter of a hard plastic insert or something similar that possibly had a hole in the centre.



That one is the stuff that I scraped off the gauze filter. The black stuff (approx 3 - 5mm) is soft (like tar) and can be rolled into a ball. There was also a small amount of sparkly material (flakes approx 1mm each).

I also changed the air filters at the same time - or at least I would have done if there were any air filters in the housings beforehand. Will be having words tomorrow with the dealer who sold me the bike about the thoroughness of their PDIs :mad:

Whaddya reckon?

that's nasty stuff.

Get professional advice before you start her up again.

Actually it is not uncommon to find stuff like that around the gauze filter on bikes that have been 'ordinary' dealer serviced.
Although it is not good news to see it, without knowing the service history, you have no idea how old the debris is, and it could have been there since the time the engine was first built.
The crankcases have very good baffling, so anything heavy is likely to stay put very 'nicely'.
Having said all that, I scrupulously clean my cases out as far as I can get with with magnets on wire and bent pipecleaners cos I like to know when anything new arrives.

The rubbery stuff is gasket-goo btw and to be expected.
The orangy-brown [plastic but sounds like a bit of the gauze-screen holder, so check that it is intact if you are reusing it. (they can be damaged by heavy-handed fitting by 'untrained' mechs)

I added a couple of articles to upnorth on this

http://www.ducati-upnorth.com/tech/sumpplug.php

http://www.ducati-upnorth.com/tech/oilchange.php

they might be useful.