Stoping Bolt Heads And The Like Oxidising And Going That Horrible Grey Colour

I've replaced everything in sight with stainless.
I'm a bit of a magpie, so I've polished all mine up before fitting but you can leave them as they come or even tone them down to a satin finish with wet and dry if you want.
To polish or satinise, simply put each bolt in a drill chuck and spin it up.

 

I removed all the bolts during winter time and send them to Mark Harris from redditch electro-plating (tip from red998) and got them back like this:

 

Complete bike £35. The bolts are exactly like new and you keep your bike original

 

Race bolt do very nice qualitystainless stuff at reasonable prices. You can get cheaper but not as beautifully finished.
Replating is all very well but will just corrode again...

 

If you want an original look then having them plated works well and the finish is better than Ducati use if you go to somewhere like Redditch electroplating. It's true the finish won't last for a number of years but if you keep the heads protected then that will help.

I use stainless steel on a lot of my bikes but if you are going to replace literally every nut and bolt you might find that the cost differential is not that great compared to plating, although of course they will not corrode and certain areas of the bike should not have stainless steel bolts used.

It's a matter of personal choice, but the good thing about plating is that you can get everything like brackets, springs, washers etc. done and they will all match up perfectly and make the bike look very original.

 

Advantages would be weight saving and shear strength. My personal preference is to buy stainless bolts by length and use them throughout the bike. A couple of the kits seem to be for the side casings only and do not include any of the bolts that hold the actual cases and other fittings (water, overflow tank etc.) together so you would need to source those if you wanted to have a complete bike that has stainless fittings.

If you can afford it then Titanium is obviously nice but there are other easier and no doubt cheaper ways to save weight and my question would be why would you just want lightweight bolts on a totally stock bike, if that's what you have?

 

As a final point (of view) if you have an earlier gold framed bike and especially if you have the stock three spoke gold wheels the gold passivated finish on the original bolts does look better from an aesthetic point of view.

 

Dont piss about, just get titanium.

 

^ What he said.

 

I take it your bike fell to pieces? :Wideyed:

 

So can we see the photo of how the bike looked with all those bolts removed, please?

 

Replaced MTS-PP 2012 nuts & bolts with Titanium metal work of art, nothing to do with any weight savings, surface corrosion inside the allen / torx heads and somehow wasn't really happy with the standard OEM bolts + nuts and misc. hardware and started a year ago to slowly change over to TI wherever possible. Got some more one-off custom TI race spec. parts in the works overseas and still need to do the fastener hardware on the wheels (brake discs, etc.).
Rest assured, not using MIC = Made In China mystery hardware, only from various reliable and established suppliers like Pro-Bolt UK Titanium, Stainless Steel, Aluminium Fasteners & Motorcycle Bolts | ProBolt and others.















Anti-seize to prevent galling & proper torque specs. applied with the right tools.

 

For a less costly but still high quality UK alternative, try Racebolt.

 

...or get some different TI hardware incl. banjos & nipples / from TITANIUM - Podium Racing - Performance Ducati Parts and Accessories as i did besides PRO-BOLT and others....