I thought it would be worse, looks like you got away with that. (Apart from all the hassle of refunding the buyer and going to get it back!)
I didn't. The rollers were all in good condition and not seized, there were no foreign objects in there that may have got between the belt and pulleys, the pulleys themselves are in good nick, and I'm happy I'd adjusted the belts correctly in the first place. It was a very hot day, the bike had been run for a couple of hours by the new owner who I'm sure was thoroughly enjoying the experience, and perhaps my fitting of the earlier fairings had caused it to get a little too hot. It's actually still in bits, I had a little trouble sourcing a new valve and the size shims I needed, plus I got distracted by some work on our house. I've also been enjoying riding my 999 and M1000. I do now have all the bits, except replacement belt covers, and have rebuilt and shimmed the head ready to go back on, but have a couple of ideas to get some more air flowing through the fairing.
Yes, it’s now running again, and there is equal compression on both cylinders, but feels a bit flat and unresponsive to the throttle. Although I’ve only run it up on my workbench, it’s still partially dismantled, and I couldn’t take it too far if I wanted to as the MOT has expired. Engine wise I dismantled it as little as possible to get the head off, which as it was the Horizontal Cylinder proved to be very little indeed. For information I can confirm the head came off AND went back on without disturbing the throttle bodies or anything above them. I loosened the worm drive clamp holding the rubber inlet tube to the throttle bodies, and removed the two nuts holding the inlet tube to the head, which gave me enough wiggle room to extract the head and get it back in place. The Vertical cylinder would obviously require the engine to come out of the bike. I’ll give it a full service including 4 new Spark Plugs. The two that were in the front cylinder give a really weak spark when tested compared to those from the rear cylinder, probably due to being soaked in unburnt fuel for a while, so to run it up I put one ‘good’ and one ‘bad’ plug in each pot. I’ve got some plans about what to do next with the bike, which I'll post later, but for that will pass back to the Build thread: https://www.ducatiforum.co.uk/threads/1000ssie-ds-900sl-hybrid.84101/
