A long time ago in a galaxy not far away I was riding my 748sps home when there was a rattle and clatter and it went onto one cylinder. I didn't stop as I was only a few hundred yard from home I took the belt covers off and the above is what I found. Anyhow I decided it was tome to look for another engine. I very quickly found one for sale. It was 916sp motor it came with a loom, P8 ECU and throttle bodies and injectors. bought it and fitted it. Had a few short runs around the East Yorkshire wolds and all was well This was till a long time ago in that same old Galaxy. A meet was arranged on the previous Ducati Forum at Willingham woods and I had a ride there. on the way back another clatter and then a lock up and the bike stopped. Needed the assistance of recovery this time. It had dropped an exhaust valve and mashed up the head and piston. I Took the head to a race engineering workshop in Northallerton and for a very good price he repaired the head and also supplied one piece forged valves. Only down side was it took him ages to do it. While I was waiting I decided to strip the 748 engine to see how much work was needed to get that back up and running. A part of me wished I had done that before rushing out to buy the 916sp. Nothing wrong with it other than the exhaust cam was locked solid. I kept working at it and it suddenly freed itself. I have no idea why it locked although I suspect that flaking cams may have played a part a piece of chrome may have jammed the bearing. To prevent the story getting any longer and more boring I rode the 916 and it ran beautifully except I could not get it to stop drinking fuel I was lucky to get 80 miles on a tankful. I scoured the internet for answers to excessive fuel consumption. I replaced the coolant temp sensors which appeared to be the main culprits. but it made no difference. Fast forward to November. I decided to remove the frame and paint it and generally tidy it up. In doing so I got to the air temp sensor and decided to test it. Quite a few people on the internet reckon it doesn't make much of a difference to fuelling if it fails. Well I can tell you it does. Mine showed a very high resistance reading. (the Colder the air temp the higher the resistance) as a result the bike thinks its in the Arctic circle and bangs loads of fuel in. A new air temp sensor is available as it is used in many cars of that era. You can get a 20 year old secondhand unit from E bay for £30+ or you can buy a new one for £27 At last its all sorted
With the price of fuel, if you ride it alot; you will quickly have *saved enough money to pay for the SP engine by realising then temp sensor was fubared! *Man maths.
Well done Higgy748! I once bought an old 2001 Porsche Boxster 986 2.7L manual, got it much cheaper than advertised (like over 20% off) as the orange Management information Light (MiL) came on, on the dashboard, during the test drive. I plugged in my very cheap & simple OBDC reader and looked up the corresponding codes before clearing the codes from the ECU. Both O2 sensors were showing as "failed" and you could smell that the engine was running really rich. "Oh it does throw that dashboard light sometimes" said the seller... yeah right, lets discuss a proper price as this needs money spending on it. Got it home and worked the problem. Chances of both O2 sensors going at the same time was unlikely. Then discovered that the air filter was not OEM, it didn't fit well and seal the edges properly, which had a rubber lip, there were visible gaps between the air filter and the edge of the air filter housing. I asked around on a forum similar to this and removed the Mass Air Flow sensor, bought a tin of MAFS cleaner (yes it really does exist), sprayed the exposed MAFS wire twice and dried the wire and the associated MAFS mirror with a hair dryer, bought and fitted a new OEM air filter and the problem was resolved. My theory was that dust was probably getting down the side of the air filter and had muddied up the MAFS device which in turn was giving a bad reading to the ECU, causing the ECU to pump more fuel into the car making the mixture really rich and the O2 sensors were protesting resulting in the MiL light warning from the ECU sent from both O2 sensors. MASF cleaner was the first step as a new MASF was over £400... I learned that sometimes it pays to both ask others for some advice and work the problem from the beginning rather than rushing to a conclusion to replace both O2 sensors and MAFS. I had a good summer with the car and sold it in the autumn, heard later on that the engine blew 5000 miles later. That dust in the air/fuel system was probably doing even more long-term damage before I acquired it.
