Valve clearance spannering difficulty ?

[Deleted account 210604001]

Sadly not, it may take 10 minutes to adjust the valves, but the bike effectively needs to be pulled apart into two to get to the valves hence the 11 hours. The dealer said that they struggled to meet the alloted time that Ducati state.

The link you have given is for the 848 engine, not the superquadro, and whilst Ducati Glasgow do have a figure for that (£390), Im dubious about it. I had two quotes from dealers in E.Mids and both quoted about the same. Also, not many 899's have hit 15K yet, It was the first one that my dealer had had with that mileage.

For the fun of the bike though, I think I will suck up £1K every 15K miles as its such a great bike (or I'll sell it before I get to the next 15K service).

RBW.

Please tell me you are kidding that it is an eleven hour job for setting the valve gear on a Ducati . I have been on the Ducati Glasgow website and to be honest although expensive it does not sound like its an 11 hour job

http://www.ducatiglasgow.co.uk/servicing/new_model_servicing_plans/service_plan_n4

 

[MattW]

Sadly not, it may take 10 minutes to adjust the valves, but the bike effectively needs to be pulled apart into two to get to the valves hence the 11 hours. The dealer said that they struggled to meet the alloted time that Ducati state.

The link you have given is for the 848 engine, not the superquadro, and whilst Ducati Glasgow do have a figure for that (£390), Im dubious about it. I had two quotes from dealers in E.Mids and both quoted about the same. Also, not many 899's have hit 15K yet, It was the first one that my dealer had had with that mileage.

For the fun of the bike though, I think I will suck up £1K every 15K miles as its such a great bike (or I'll sell it before I get to the next 15K service).

RBW.

I remember reading about the Ducati superquadro valve servicing from an American bloke who bought one of the first Panigale's and did a huge tour of America on it. Apparently he was the first person in the States (and quite possibly the world) to hit the 15k valve service and he posted pictures of the bike in two lumps at the dealer.

I'm not surprised that a lot of people sell them before the 'big service'...

 

[Deleted account 210604001]

Have a look at this thread, admittedly its for a 45K service, and included head gasket replacement, but the bike needs to be pulled apart like this for the valves.

http://www.899panigale.org/forum/du...mile-service-headgasket-replacement-pics.html

The bike in the thread now has over 50K on it, and its ridden by a very cool lady. (Any one who rides that much on a Ducati in that short amount of time is cool as far as Im concerned).

RBW.

*I also needed a rocker arm replaced on my valve clearance service due to wear, but this was done FOC by Ducati.

 

[MattW]

Have a look at this thread, admittedly its for a 45K service, and included head gasket replacement, but the bike needs to be pulled apart like this for the valves.

http://www.899panigale.org/forum/du...mile-service-headgasket-replacement-pics.html

The bike in the thread now has over 50K on it, and its ridden by a very cool lady. (Any one who rides that much on a Ducati in that short amount of time is cool as far as Im concerned).

RBW.

*I also needed a rocker arm replaced on my valve clearance service due to wear, but this was done FOC by Ducati.

Just taken a look at that thread - wow.

 

[jwpzx9r]

Not trying to put BMW down or side with the Ducati but it would be interesting to see a complete breakdown on say three years and 30k miles covered by both bikes in terms of what cost would be incurred on servicing the respective machines. I have a suspicion that at the end of the day there would not be a huge amount of difference in the costs but would like to know what the costs actually are. That link to the Ducati Glasgow website seems to be pointing out that there is a lot of not quite correct information about the servicing costs for a Ducati.. are they right or are Ducati Glasgow masking their actual costs?

 

[mak595]

i really fancy a 1200 multistrada but the service costs (and reliability!) has kiboshed the idea, if my gs goes it will be for a KTM smt....

 

[Stevie4scoops]

Why can bike manufacturers not use self adjusting tappits as they do in cars? Can you imagine having your car valve clearances checked/re-shimmed every 12-18k miles?

 

[Bendy toy]

Honda used to quote 15000 miles intervals for valve shim checks on the VFR750. "That's £500 to you sir but don't worry they never new shims." So, if I don't have it done because they never need new shims? Then the warranty will be void.

Honda have extended the valve check periods but it looks like a make money system to me.

 

[Bendy toy]

Why can bike manufacturers not use self adjusting tappits as they do in cars? Can you imagine having your car valve clearances checked/re-shimmed every 12-18k miles?

My Yammie Diversion 900 - about as close as it gets to a car engine in a bike - had it's shims checked at 70,000 miles. One exhaust was a tiny bit below the limit. All others were acceptable. It had no knock sensor so was tuned to run on 95RON, yet there was almost zero valve seat regression. The cam bearings still had visible honing marks on the running surfaces.

 

[MattW]

Why can bike manufacturers not use self adjusting tappits as they do in cars? Can you imagine having your car valve clearances checked/re-shimmed every 12-18k miles?

Hydraulic tappets take up quite a lot of space which just isn't available in the cylinder heads of most bikes. They also aren't well suited to the fairly aggressive cam profiles and high revs of most bike engines.

However the new Harley engine has them.

 

[kwallace21]

My twin cam had one pot shimmed at 6K. Nothing since and on 18K.

 

[rovert57]

think the old honda cbx 750 had hydraulic tappets on it , but that seemed to have been the only jap bike that did never heard of again .

 

[adventuredon]

I have replaced one shim in 55000 miles.

 

[Stevie4scoops]

I replaced two out of four shims at 600 miles on my Honda CRF 250, two out of four at 600 miles on my KTM 390 Duke and three out of eight at 18k miles on my GS LC. The Honda and KTM were too tight and the GS were the opposite.

The KTM was bought at 300 miles from a dealer and the first service was stamped in the book as being done. I wasn't convinced it had been so did it at 600 miles which proved it hadn't been.

Someone I bought bike from recently told me a friend of his had his GS serviced which included valve clearance check. The guy in question is a truck mechanic so marked the rocker covers before the bike went in so he could see if they had been removed or not. When he collected his bike, they hadn't been off so his took it up with the dealer who was very embarrassed and quickly completed the task.