[Ducati] Had a bad day

[Don Ross]

"Anyway, it's a terrible experience."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Man oh man!  What a fright, EJ.
Happy to hear that you saved her.

The good news, as you say, is that you had Dzus fasteners.
One of the first changes I made on my '00 Cagiva Mito 125EV was to pull off those
allen head fairing bolts and their receivers and replaced them w/Dzus fasteners.
Now, zip zap zop, fairings off in less than 60 seconds.  

The good news II...
Gratitude will have you view this as a relatively inexpensive lesson.
Better this than losing her altogether on the roadside, eh?

Follow Rich's advice!

DR


----- Original Message -----
From: EJ
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 9:13 PM
To: ducati at ducati.net
Subject: [Ducati] Had a bad day

My bike (97' 916SP) just caught fire yesterday.

It suddenly lost power. I let it slide to roadside, and saw smoke
coming out of the right fairing vent. I know it's the regulator, so I
took the fairing apart and... I saw fire! right under the battery. I
put it off with my leather glove, installed the fairing back and
pushed the bike 3 miles (mostly uphills) home, with all my protecting
gears on. Almost dehydrated.

I'm glad that I have the Dzus screws on my bike. Without them I
wouldn't have be able to take the fairings apart and put out the fire
as fast as I did. The regulator is completely toasted. There is a
short and the wire started burning because of that. It burnt a hole in
my battery, and the sulfuric acid kept dripping out on my way home.
Gladly there is no metal part beneath the battery, only the CF
fairings.

http://tinyurl.com/f29c3
http://tinyurl.com/fvf84
http://tinyurl.com/hnrx6
http://tinyurl.com/l5q8d

Anyway, it's a terrible experience. Just to remind you guys that, if
you ever suspect your regulator isn't normal (my GEN light came up
sometimes in the past two months), replace it. You might burn you
beloved Duc if you ignore it.

I'm planning to change the yellow wires coming out of the alternator
(2-wire type), so I'm taking the crank case off. However, how did you
people who have done this before manage to run the larger-awg wires
through that tiny hole in front of the alternator cover? Do you guys
have any suggestions about where else to check?

And a final question. I tried to drain the engine oil. I released the
filter (smaller one) and the drain plug on the bottom of the engine
case, but only 2 litres of oil came out. The larger filter isn't
removed so there might be around 250cc in it, but it's still way too
less. I'm sure the oil level before I drained it is normal, right
between the MAX and MIN lines. Is there anything I'm missing?

--  
EJ