I bought some carbon heel guards for my new-to-me SF V4S - The last bit of tinsel that I want to put on the bike. I'm used to threadlocker and red can be a real pain sometimes but I've usually been able to crack it with a little heat if necessary. But on this bike? I cannot get them to move and fear I've slightly rounded one of the bolts on the near side. Dumb question - Am I missing something here??!
Had the same issue with my SFV4S. I think Guiseppe must have poured a whole bottle of loctite on these! And they are made of cheese doesn’t help! I had to use a soldering iron to heat up the heads and melt the loctite; and then a left handed drill bit on a couple of the messed up heads. Nightmare for a such a simple job
Ok - As I feared, it's not just me. So they're using ample red threadlocker with poor quality pins. Cheers for the replies, misery loves company after all. It's going back to Ducati Cambridge next month to have the tank and panels replaced following the brake fluid episode. I'll get them to fit these as a penance.
I've generally been quite good - St Neots got me out of few scrapes in the past, including when I stripped down my old, and beloved 1098SF over one winter and couldn't get it back together. Ducati Cambs owe me new panels as the front brake master cylinder squirted out its fluid over the front of the bike on the first ride out.
Allow me to extend the set of bolts… I hereby nominate the bolts that hold the wings to the bike. To remove the silver radiator trims you have to loosen the bolts that hold the wings on. But the red thread locker that Giuseppe used is once again stronger than than the head of the bolt, and heat prior to the attempt is out of the question because the parts being secured are both plastic. 7 of the 8 came out with a fight. Number 8 came out about three turns and then the allen-key rounded the bolt. Nice weekend job with a 5mm drill coming up…
Probably the accountants in charge of engineering again, cheaper to order a load of super loctite and use it on everything than spec the right one for each application. Plus it’s more money for the dealer when you round stuff off
Here it is, the little bastard! I have drilled out/off the head with a left-hand drill, hoping that the drill might unscrew the thing as I drilled. No such luck. My last chance is a slot in the remaining metal, but I don’t hold out much hope seeing how tightly it is stuck and the small amount of metal left with which to apply torque. I don’t fancy my chances of drilling it out from the other side without touching the threads on the captive nut. I may end up just getting my tame service engineer to order me a replacement plastic. Other hand sanitisers are available…
Brilliant effort and no damage so far Could you not heat up the nut with a hair dryer slightly to break down the thread locker and get some mole grips on it? A bit primitive but it’s worked for me in the past.
Try threading two nuts onto the remaining stud and locking them together, then use a spanner on the lower one, with plenty of leverage or an extension bar. This might hopefully be enough to break the Loctite free. As others have said, a drop of 243 on the thread is really all you need. Anything more is total overkill, so Lord knows why Ducati use so much. I binned around 90% of the bolts on my bike, just after I bought it, as they are about as robust as Swiss cheese. Edit: You could also place the whole part in a bowl of boiling water for ten minutes or so, before you attempt to remove the stud. Might help soften up the Loctite.
It is out! I did indeed put two nuts on to the thread and lock them together, but that was not enough. I ended up carefully drilling out the bolt from the back. The thread within the captive nut in the plastic piece is intact. The bike is now back together using a drop of the blue thread locker on each of the bolts, so next time they should come out more easily.
