Changed a set of belts on a monster 696 at the weekend. California Cycle Works belts have been on 5 years, bike doesn’t do big mileage but still impressed at how new they looked, virtually no signs of wear or perishing of rubber at all, could have done with tightening a tad, could just force a 6mm allen past the roller. New CCW belts went on and look like a slightly different construction. I have no worries running these past the recommended 2 years at all.
So Ducati can extract more hard-earned out of you. Unnecessarily. I will be changing the belts on my 998 soon too, same time frame, will be interesting to see how they look.
What mileage have those belts done? I have the ccw belts, 2 years about 6000 miles and look to be on their last legs with the teeth bumps showing on the outside…
In an attempt to have a serious debate, if Ducati are nowadays saying belts only need changing every 24,000km or 30,000km, depending when the Desmo service falls due, or every 60 months, which ever is arrived at first, then why change every 2 years? Even the desmodue scrambler engine is every 20,000km/60 months.
I’m all for extending the service interval for my belts on my M1100 and have regularly gone to 4 years however…Can you confirm that the above service chart definitely applies to air cooled 2V 696/796/1100 Monsters? It appears to be applicable, possibly, to water cooled 4V 821/1200 types?
I can only go on the information Ducati put out there Ricky and they list the air cooled 2V variants in the 3rd line of the small print at the bottom, where it indicates when the Desmo service falls due, 24,000km/15,000 miles on those engines, and the schedule itself says to change the belts at the Desmo service. Consequently, I believe Ducati’s position on belt changes every 2 years has changed over the years, probably because modern day belt manufacturing is different to those produced 25 years ago.
Excellent - didn’t notice the “small print” notes at the bottom when I read this on my phone. Cheers.
Just changed the belts on both the M900 and 916, both CCW belts and both been on 5 years, 6k miles on the Monster and 3k on the 916. They certainly don't look as pristine as the OP's but they were still holding up and I'm sure they'd have gone longer if I'd wanted to.
What do they look like on the business side, at the very bottom of the tooth root? Any signs of very fine cracking or similar?
Sorry, should have posted a pic of the teeth side - that's what matters really. Look very good, no cracking or deterioration that I can see which is why I think they'd be fine for a while longer. Certainly nothing like the belt below, from my Son's car; It didn't actually break, rather just stopped turning because the teeth around the crankshaft pulley all came off.
How do the car and bike belts compare when you bend them backwards on themselves so the toothed side is outward then compress them into a tight radius. Look hard at the tooth root. Take the picture on a 90 degree side veiw.,
Can't compare now as the car belt is gone but the CCW belts look fine from every inspection, the only sign of wear is the 'polishing' of the back where it runs on the tensioners. FWIW, the car belt was well past it's change-by when it failed as my Son didn't want to pay £300 to get it changed.
You would think so but, the total cost for me to repair it including all new valves, gaskets, belt, tensioner, water pump and even the camshaft alignment tools came to just £250 so the cheeky sod said he'd leave it until it broke again rather than maintain it properly! As it happens the car was scrapped last year due to the clutch slave cylinder failing and the cost of repair (gearbox/engine splitting to get to it) was more than the car was worth so it's been replaced and, I made sure the cambelt was changed on the replacement.
Yekkies! Please tell me which car needs an engine/box split to replace a slave cylinder. I would hate to buy one as a runaround for any one of my brood!
