loony888 wroteyeah, you could use the best quality synthetic oil and change it every 1000klms for life for the cost of that! well, almost!!
use decent oil, start it, warm it up fully, ride it. from those i've spoken too, rocker damage comes from either mechanical ignorance or lack of mechanical sympathy.
paul.
Hi Paul,
Now I'd normally totally agree with what you've posted here.
Until recently...
I've owned Ducati's for almost 30 years (It will be 30 yrs come next March) without a break and covered probably well over 250,000 miles on them, mostly hard miles!
I've also worked as a Ducati mechanic/race engine builder, building and maintaining God knows how many motors down the years.
I fitted V Two 604's to my 851/916 special, I always use top quality oil which's changed well short of the recommended periods also fitting a new filter, I always warm my bikes up before caning the crap out of them.
The 604's are short duration high acceleration cams with similar peak and lift to 996SPS cams...
After aound 4,500 miles I pulled the heads for a 'Look See' and found all 4 Exhaust opening rockers damaged, the front ones showing signs of wear, the rear pots being totally fcuked, the cams were unmarked!
All of the rest of the shims were at the most only 1 thou' out from what I'd set them at.
V Two say it's probably due to using faulty 916 rockers, all of the rockers I fitted were in perfect condition and the tollerences (Shimming) were spot on, not in the ball park but most definately 'Spot On'.
I've now rebuilt the heads using another set of good rockers, I'll let you know how this set fares.
So my point is rocker failure isn't always down to mechanical ignorance or lack of mechanical sympathy.
Short of the Works race team mechanics, (Who strip and rebuild the motors after every race) no one could take more care of their motors than I have.
I'm on personal 1st name terms with every single part inside all of my motors and I'm talking from personal looong term experience.
Steve R
