As Fin says, you need new leads. There is so much resistance in oem leads of any age that there is not enough juice getting through to both turn the engine over and give a decent spark. With new leads you will find the engine turns over much faster and fires instantly. Talk to Exige...
Or you could just clean you're main earth and starter motor connections with a fibre glass pen or emery paper for a couple of quid. I can guarantee my bike would be harder to start than yours (and probably most on here), but proper care means it'll start, all weathers, all temperatures with a standard battery and original 15 year old cables. I might have a LiPo battery now but that's just down to weight. A sprag clutch, should it start to fail, can be fixed in about half an hour for £5 too. Unless you've got more money than you need I wouldn't be spending where you don't have to or worrying about potential problems. If you heard everything that could happen you'd probably sell it.
Oops, Ebay price is only £79.95 not £85, plus the above mentioned discounts. Just to balance judgement on my products here's the view of one of Europes most renowned Ducati tuners from Sweden Italiabikecenter | 'Hi, to be honest there havent been a huge demand for upgraded cables, however that may well be out of ignorance I think. With kits available Id be able to convince quite a few customers I think, dont have to act here as I really think its a brilliant idea. Take the 1098 for example (this will be a good argument for you too to sell kits). Pone you thrashed the starter flange on it, all replacement components are now superseeded to 1198 stuff! Which means you need to swap every bit in the starter chain to 1198 stuff including starter motor, parts alone are around €1000, yikes. Even if its a 1198 its still pricey to fix with parts alone adding up to €450, add labour to both examples. Plus the joy of a quick safe start. I talked to the owner and he approved on my suggestion to take up on your offer.'
OMG !!!! tonite after work,, about to put it into the back of my mates van to take it home i thot,, i will just try it,, and guess what it started immediatly !!!!!! so dove it straight home ,,, since have tried it 3 times, starts immed first time,, if anything better than ever !!!!!! WTF !!!!
Yep ,,,,,,, " duke of stowe " has posted an ebay link with photo of the errant relay , so can have a look at it and also get one / two in halfrauds , also cables connections at weekend ,,,, ,,, crail speed show this week end ,,,,,if the rain clears !!!!
ok , bike is starting and running good, but still not confident that the problem is not still lurking waiting to strike again when least convenient,,,, so stripped it down today to find the errant ( pos ) relay,, all conections to / from the battery are good , as is, from what i can see, the connections onto the solonoid ( i think i found it on the back of the battery box ) so , is this the relay, and if not where on the back of the battery box is it , or is it somewhere else in the other picture,, help please ..
renew all the relay's anyway. first chance change the leads as well. you will be eliminating a lot of possibilities straight off.
Will try to get nerw one ,,, nearest bike shop is 30 miles away , nearest ducati 150!!!!!!!!!! ,,, got sparky in work to test it ,, he says it is fine ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,strange thing is that the bike is starting and runing fine again !!!! Leads and connections all look good ,,,,,, how easy id it to replace the battery / starter leads , as per exigy. ( Fairings are off and battery box / heat shield already dropped down )
PM your email and I'll send you the instructions so you can review, you've done the hard bit, just need to get the heat shield and harness routed back where it was.
New to this but had a look at 749/999 wiring diag. There are only 2 relays on the bike that I can see, the coils/fuel pump relay and the headlight relay (which is not a concern right now). I've never worked on a 749/999 but if its stripped down like you state it should be fairly straightforward to renew the battery/starter leads. On my 1098 the battery leads looked like new, but were still causing a massive volts drop. When I renewed/piggybacked the leads, the difference in the way the starter turned over and the bike fired up was amazing.
The relay could appear to be ok when tested by the sparky, but it's not really a definitive test. The contacts on the relay are tiny and deal with arcing everytime they operate, eventually leading to errossion of the contact material, which can then lead to intermittent problems. For the small cost of a new relay it's a no brainer to replace it to eliminate that as a potential problem.
