Flywheel Retaining Nut In the early ‘90’s Ducati used two jam nuts to secure the flywheel, but replaced this design with a single very-fine-thread flange nut that carried with it an extremely high torque requirement.
There’s two parts to this issue.
First, the factory installed defective nuts on some 1999 and 2000 model year bikes before the loosening problem was caught. These nuts came loose even when installed with the correct torque because the treads were oversized. If you have one of these bikes, you should have it checked. If the nut spins on/off easily it should be replaced, not just re-torqued.
Second, the flywheel retaining nut design needs to be tightened to a very high torque level to keep it from loosening. It’s the highest-torqued fastener on the bike.
You’ll not get a loosening problem unless you’ve removed the nut for some reason. When you go to reinstall it you’ll find that without the proper tools it’s VERY difficult to immobilize the crank (which is necessary to reach the high torque) and many shops/owners don’t understand how critical this is. The use of this kind of nut in this particular application is on the envelope of fastener design.
So I’m not offering any advice here as to how to do it.
Consequently, some owners have decided to replace the single Ducati nut with the two jam nut design offered by Nichols.
http://www.nicholsmfg.com/ A couple adventurous owners have tried Nord-Lock washers with the stock nut.
http://www.nord-lock.com/default.asp?id=3&language=4 The point I’m trying to make is that if you don’t have a 1999 or 2000 MY bike. and you haven’t touched the flywheel nut, don’t worry about it coming loose.
To S.P.:
Crankshaft Oil Galley Plug Early-year bikes had problems with this plug backing-out. If not caught in time, the plug would come out and you'd get a catastrophic loss of lubrication. In 2000, the aluminum oil galley plug was replaced with a steel plug, which solved the problem.
Shazaam!
Threaded Mode