[Ducati] RE: Ducati Digest, Vol 5, Issue 4

[mitch velickovich]

Doug: I hear your pain and that is exactly my concern. Early 916's had the
flywheel nut issue and Ducati Co. issued a credit for all Ducati shops to
disassemble, inspect, remove nut, apply red loctite and retorque same nut to
240 nm or 140 Ft.lbs as you described. According to Ducati the problem went
away. I personally, never experienced any problems on my 1997/916 after that
recall.

I have installed a Bucci light weight flywheel on my 999S myself and I love
it! I have used all correct maintenance practices and followed their Tech
manual to the letter in order to avoid this particular issue. I have
actually torqued to nut to 145 Ft. lbs to give me an extra +/- % room for
tool calibration errors. The initial torque was accomplished by an air gun
and later confirmed by the torque wrench (it is easier this way since you
avoid any chance of retaining tool sleapage) 

The nut is a concern in my head and so is the new discovered potential
cracking issue of Light weight flywheels I am hearing about. Does anybody
have any experience w/this subject of cracking aluminum flywheels? 

As far as performance I am happy to report that the 999S feels as snappy and
keeps up with the 999R in acceleration only. The 999R pulls away in 3rd.
Both of us test riders weight almost the same and we switched bikes to
eliminate all possible errors. I have not lost the torque bottom felling at
all however on the 999S, I had to adjust the idle a little higher in order
to compensate the removal of the original flywheel weight and momentum
carried. (5 lbs vs 2.5 lbs) The bikes is a lot faster coming out of turns
and had to adjust my riding skills a little on the entry portion of them
since it is more prone to wheel lock now. (a slipper clutch will eliminate
this issue)(More $$$$$!!!! (%%#^#^!!!)) 

Overall I am happy, however have reliability concerns. I will report if any
issues arise.



Message: 10
Date: Mon, 1 May 2006 23:33:37 -0400
From: "Douglas Hunt" <stingray at charter.net>
Subject: [Ducati] Re: Ducati flywheel nut loosening
To: <ducati at ducati.net>
Message-ID: <000b01c66d99$32e79720$6401a8c0 at littledog>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

snip--Flywheel rotor etc coming loose has been a recurring problem with
Ducatis for some time. Typically this happens when flywheel is changed out
for an aftermarket flywheel and the retaining nut is not properly torqued. I
do believe over the course of the past 10 years flywheel nut torque may even
have been addressed as a factory bulletin, meaning it was not a recall but
an advisory to shops to at least for it as a potential problem. Some of us
have been fortunate to simply discover a loose nut. This was the case with
me at least once. In another case nut was loose enough that it wallowed out
keyway on rotor and I had to replace rotor. So it does happen, usually it
will make noise or present other problems before it goes so far as to damage
stator and pickups.--endsnip

i just completed  the replacement of my starter sprag spring(1992
907ie),which required the removal of the rotor and flywheel and i used
permanent red loctite and 140 footlbs on  my torque wrench(too bad i didnt
have enough xtra cash to put on one of those lightweight flywheels while i
was in there)but that job wasnt near as bad as i thought it might be so
maybe this winter a lightweight flywheel project might just materialize.


doug hunt