Been discussing it with a friendly forum/dealer @ Cornerspeed who thinks the battery may well be the solution. It's getting collected today and taken away for being sorted, but i've provided them with all the info possible to investigate. Hopefully i'll have it back here soon
I was going to say switch the display mode to batter voltage and look to see if there is a big drop off with the starter under load. Also try plugging a booster pack into the battery to see if it makes a difference. Those would be my starting points. I've had battery's show 12v perfectly and hold a charge and then as soon as you try to turn the bike over, nothing! Dead cell was the cause
Done the display and also with a multimeter attached, there's no gaping hope in the V when under load. I've also tried with a booster attached and gives the standard usual symptoms.
Thanks buddy. It's now back at the dealer waiting for him to sort it. Happily, it's -2 outside and frosty, so it's not like i'd be riding it anyway. I must be missing a trick somewhere here... The front calipers have a 2nd 'over the mudguard' brake line. The consequences of this are that the banjo on the RHS caliper is a double... What this means is that it's bloody near impossible to get off and even harder to get back on. There's not really enough clearance to get past the wheel, it's wiggle, wobble, eeek, grrrr, eventually it just about goes on. Obviously you're not swapping wheels every 3rd ride, so it's not the biggest pain in the world... but it's very irritating. I can see my lines being swapped for a set of straight single lines and no 3rd line.
I put a cloth over my calipers to protect the wheel rim and gently ease them outwards against the piston. Once the piston has been depressed they come off quite easily.
I plan to fit single lines to my R this winter...just to save from scratching the wheel and also for the obvious benefit of feel.
Dealer just called me. They've spoken to a specialised tuner who does lots of Ducatis. "1098s, wont start with Termi cans, wont start, yup, seen that lots" So its going in for a full custom map tomorrow. Should be back tomorrow afternoon.
Well, he's no more specialised than most other Dyno places as such, but he does a lot of work on Ducatis. But i'd rather not throw that out yet until i get the bike back tomorrow afternoon. Put it this way, it wouldn't take that many guesses to work out really, but lets just keep it for now that the dealer is sending it out 'somewhere' for a custom remap tomorrow morning But it does fit with what i was told by Rich at Louigimoto, they also have a map for 1098s due to the starting issue and intermittent stalling they seem to suffer with.
Bike is back in the garage. Apparently it was dumping way too much fuel on startup, so that's now been turned down by 27% and a fuelling remap done. It's also had a new set of plugs installed. It starts, runs and sounds like it should.... We'll see in the morning if it's 100%... but i'm certainly hopeful.
Had some early morning fun in the garage with spanners and the 'exact start' cables. So they're all fitted and good and we're ready to try once its a more wife appropriate time for firing up a loud Ducati. Cabling was simple enough if a little fiddly. Just need more bendy fingers sometimes, but we got there without any dramas. Also gave me a chance to do some cleaning in and around battery box area.
Well i have to kind of apologise. I got back home on Sat afternoon 'bum bum bum bum.... tshhhhhhh' 'bum bum bum bum.... tshhhhhhh' 'bum bum bum bum.... tshhhhhhh' 'bum bum bum bum.... tshhhhhhh' So i threw my toys out of the pram and told the dealer i wasn't keeping it, it was coming back to him. Now, this is where once again they've shown class and customer service of great proportion. Their answer was "Whatever you need, if you want us to send it off again to somewhere, sure, if you want the ZX6R you P/X'd back and we completely cancel the deal, that's also fine with us. You can of course have anything else we have in our stock no worries..." etc... All great service from them. I then lobbed more toys out of the pram and deleted my thread. (Sorry). Me and Mrs Weeksy along with a few other lads some of you will know from the past Fil2 and Couchcommando were all discussing it and i was being a bit of a brat, they were being the voice of reason "Send it back to them, get them to try again" I was all "Nah, sod it, i don't want it back here again" Fast forward to about 3pm today after a day out with the family and i thought. "Right, lets see what this sodding thing does, last chance" Now, when they dropped the bike off, i also spoke to Dave Woods who had done the ECU changes the other day, he said "From cold it may need a little throttle"... So ok, onto this afternoons try and i gave it a bit 'more' throttle i would say than previously on the first cycle and what do you know, the bike fired up straight off the bat. First time, first press (admittedly with throttle). Straight onto a nice idle of 1250-1350rpm on the dash display. Ran it up to temp and it was all good. The bike then starts instantly with no throttle and straight off the button 'bum bum boom !' I'm now leaning heavily towards "this is staying" but i've been bitten by this more than once even in a short time of ownership, i think "Yeah we've got it now....." then it's a nice bit of 'bum bum bum bum.... tshhhhhhh' i then hold my hands to my head. Last night i was actually closer to tears than any man should be at the thought of sending a motorbike back, i was properly upset at the thought. That's the updated, thanks to El Toro the thread is now back up and we're here having the discussions again. I've only got a question really for some 1098 owners regarding your cold starting, throttle, procedures etc etc. So anything you have here even if it's "Nah mate, you should never touch the throtle as per manual", i accept it says that, but 2 previous 1098 owners i know have both needed some throttle on cold start.
I was going to say " cold start procedure: put it in the garage 'til spring" but I thought that wouldn't be helpful in your current time of angst and worry and that it may throw coals on your fire...so I didn't.
