Hi Folks, I looked at a used Red 21 plate 950S Supersport a few weeks ago at a local Ducati dealer (potentially my first venture into Ducati ownership) and noticed the paintwork between the top of the tank protector and petrol cap was very poor, i.e. lots of orange peel; the the rest of the paintwork on the bike appeared fine. I queried whether the bike had had paintwork done to the tank as it's not the quality of finish I would have expected of Ducati. Not sure if Ducati paintwork is by hand or robots? The dealer told me it hadn't had any paintwork and this was the quality paintwork I could expect for a new sub-£15k bike from Ducati. Really?? Is this the experience of Ducati 950S Supersport owners? Grateful for your thoughts. Thanks, Andrew
Hi I don’t seem to have any issues with my 17 plate SS. It isn’t lacquered but has been ceramic coated. Perhaps just a bad example?
Thanks for your reply, must admit though I thought I would have had more responses from owners as I'm holding off a second visit to the dealer. Unlacquered paint, is that standard for Ducati?
Owned my 916 for 26 years. Paintwork and frame is fine. Have had 4 MTS' and the paintwork and frame have all been fine. The bikes have always been garaged, but not cleaned obsessively, often put away wet, and treated no differently to the Fireblades owned (which BTW have all been fine). Oh, and the electrics have all been fine also... lucky I guess :-D
Re the unlaquered paint take a look at The Missenden Flyers You Tube where he has a good video about his Panigale and adding PPF to it, the paint on my 2020 939 looks great but from what I read on other forums it’s not 100% perfect. If you don’t put any tank protection on you’ll be looking to get it scratched (ie tank pad).
There’s options with no clearer paint. if it was a keeper, I’d be inclined to strip the bodywork off and get it cleared by decent local friendly bodyshop. You can go down the self heal ppf route also but it would likely be more expensive than a full paint job even for a good job. I can get a whole car painted for less money than a ppf job. It’s insane the costs.
All the 'lesser' (non-matte) models do not come with lacquered paint. So that's SuperSport, Monsters, and V2 Panigale and Streetfighter, probably V2 Multistradas too. It's extremely annoying for a 'premium' brand, with bikes priced as such. I'm paying a few hundred quid to have my Streetfighter V2 PPF'd, when I'd much rather have paid a few hundred quid more for Ducati to finish the job properly in the first place, though at 15K, you'd have thought it would be already lacquered without charging more. Good on TMF for mentioning this, because it's something the journalists rarely mention, but it's a serious consideration for ownership. Unprotected paintwork is different for orange-peel, bad initial paintwork, of course, which is not something I've seen.
Only owned my Supersport S for a week now but it’s an 18 plate & in mint condition throughout. Definitely no paint issues
