so im riding the bike home tonight after all my friends saying what a piece of unreliable shit ducatis are and im like 'dude you dont know shit' ive literally owned every bike worth owning and this thing makes me laugh my head off! so there i am, trying to get my elbow down in the first rays of this years warm sun then....... BAM!!!! Fully lent over in 4th gear with the throttle increasing the bike decides to shut itself down wtf!!!!! the bike goes to fold in on itself mid corner! i push myself upright onto the opposite side of the road and theres no cars coming my way to end my days..... after the original thoughts of 'shit, that was way too close' more realistic thoughts came to me as why this pile o shite almost tried to kill me? i rode it another 3 miles. it felt like it was only on 1 cylinder at the time until i got to a friends house.... im really thinking about selling up tbh. few questions to those in the know..... a) who on earth thought it was a good idea at ducati to suddenly chop the power in half? if a car was on opposite side of the road id be dead right now b) is there a diagnostic system to let me know whats wrong? c) has your bike been reliable? i dont care bout people saying 'its a ducati, what do you you expect? thats not true, ive owned proper supercars and all the issues can be ironed out. ultimately a vehicle is either flawed or can be improved. even my old tnt benelli could be eventually brought round to be reliable. im not new ducati ownership, but have never covered a massive amount of miles on them. im just really cheesed off. if a jap bike has a issue a light blips up but it doesnt just shut the bike down. that could have killed me
Sounds pretty much like everything i have been through. The whole shutting down, one cylinder thing. Mine turned out to be ECU failure, but it took a long time to find that out (06 749).
Did you retrieve any fault codes using the dash button? This bike can suffer serious problems due to a £1.99 part. There is a relay below the starter solenoid that can fail and cause no end of problems. Unfortunately to get at it you need the battery box out and the heat shield removed. The relay controls the coils/injectors/fuel pump.
Some people relocate this relay once they've got at it, to somewhere more accessible. They also take steps to weather-proof it. This seems terrifically sensible to me
thanks guys for the responses. ill check the error codes on the dash later. hope its nothing too serious. theres no good time to break down. but mid corner was frightening
i remember casey stoner saying that and thought he was a tool when he said it too collected the bike today. turned the ignition on and the yellow light goes out. press the starter and it starts for maybe 5 seconds running on 1 cylinder and then cuts out again. this is going to mean no error codes to go on. ill pull it apart this weekend and see if i can fix it. ill replace relay, check coils (are 1098 coils the same? if so i have some from my old bike still) earths etc. ive calmed down a bit now as i was really angry with the bike last night. just been booking a trip to go to isle of man and had planned to take the duc but thinking a big bang r1 might be a good idea. its almost like a excuse to buy another bike
After seeing some coil swapping at Jerez, 999 coil lead connector plugs are a different shape to 1098 ones.
The coils will fit, they are compatible with lots of models. Early 749/999s had coils without fly leads. They were changed on later models. The connectors on the fly leads are the same so later coils fit earlier bikes.
ok so she lives to fight another day. front coil wire had snapped. its just before the plug itself. ive managed to solder it back together although id prefer to change that section of harness if possible as all the wires look very hard and brittle. ive ordered the troublesome relay replacement too so ill swap that out just to be on the safe side. thanks for all who have helped with the diagnosis. its what these forums were made for
what loom and coils have you got the later coils have a longer fly lead on the to put the connector away from the elements...you could get these and move the damaged connector on your loom further up the wires....
