engine blown

There's a considerable difference between hitting the limiter briefly on a dyno run, and holding it against the stop continuously.

 

i have to say I've nailed a zx10r like no other bike I've had purely because i knew id punt it on before the warranty ran out , did 6000 hard miles on that including a 2200 mile trip round france and hardly using more than third gear because i liked the sound of the race fit growler , i did multiple 2nd gear fly bys for the camera on the limiter at 123mph and have to say no ducati could have lived with that abuse , this was a 2009 model knocking out 182bhp at the back wheel pdq custom map , i prefer ducati but jap bikes love punishment and even my s1000rr bm took a hiding for the 4000 miles i did on it including track days

 

My Tuono blew up on a dyno which is why i mention the point. Now it may well have been a ham-fisted operative but nonetheless the reason a limiter kicks in is to protect the engine and surely the more times you test that limiter the more times you are chancing your luck.

How do limiters actually work? i guess they are set at a certain rpm in the ECU but is it not possible to rev it so hard that the momentum of the motor spinning up and subsequent thrust is sufficient to take the engine parts past what the ECU limiter is set at and so past the safety point? I don't know but would be interesting to know.

 

I stand to be corrected - but understood on modern engines the rev limiter worked by cutting the ignition once the preset RPM threshold had been reached, with ignition re-energised once the revs fell below the threshold.

It follows that the rev limiter threshold would be set below the RPM level that the engine would be known to fail (piston speed/acceleration?) but was told I was told by a Ducati maintenance god that if held on the limiter there was a good chance that the timing belts could jump teeth introducing a somewhat more permanent mechanical limiter when the valves met the pistons. Always possible to over rev an engine going down the gears though and the rev limiter wouldn't prevent this.

Mr Bimble.

 

Mate had a r1200s blow up, only 8k miles. Not gentle miles mind..

 

Chris, it doesn't matter which ducati dealer does it, as it should all be registered on the ducati database.

Speculation here, but I think they get a lesser hourly labour rate for warranty work, so that may be why they dont really want to know. Either that or they had loads of work anyway.
Regardless, its not exactly building customer relations to give you the run around.

Good luck mate, hope you get it sorted.

 

Yes it is. I cringed to see/hear my bike hitting the limiter several times while being set up by CJS. But he refuses to do a 'part job' to less than limiting rpm (or did then). It is one of the reasons I am staying with the stock exhaust on my 2013 bike - I don't want it put through that, even though the 2011 bike survived unscathed. And dyno tuning is very desirable after an exhaust change IMHO.

 

At a set RPM, the ECU will cut either the fuel or the spark to kill the power from the motor. As that point there is no further "thrust", so all you're left with is the inertia of the moving parts to maintain the movement - you won't be getting much increase. The problem is that the safety point is not fixed, and finding it is a one-time process, but in 99.9% of cases the limiter will be such that the safety point is not breached.

Obviously, holding an engine on the limiter subjects it to rapid, repeated application of loading and unloading. This causes all sorts of bad juju.

 

6th to 1st from 90mph would do it.

 

In a spectacular fashion. :biggrin:

 

Dealers hourly rate is lower than what they charge you, the public. They (dealer) won't make any money out of a warranty job.

 

No idea about bikes, but Apple pay us perfectly reasonably for warranty work vs what we normally charge customers.

But motorcycles may be entirely different.

 

I can't be specific about ducati (because I don't know) but if we were talking cars or trucks then the warranty labour rate will be close to the average retail recovery rate so as not to dis incentivise dealers from doing warranty work, as far as parts are concerned they will probably make around 10%.

also I think most dealers are fairly quiet at the moment so anything that helps keep the workshop ticking over will be welcome.

 

To address a few comments. I had more warranty claims on my ZX6R than any other bike I've owned. My TL1000 blew it's gearbox last year and is a know weak spot and common fault, my R1 packed up twice while running it in when tiny pieces of metal shorted out the alternator pick up so jap bikes aren't any more reliable, I just think their faults are less spectacular. My ZX6 even had all it's stripped parts requested back to Japan for investigation as they'd not seen the fault before. I'd hope this is how Ducati act being such low mileage. Again, best of luck with it.

 

Hi Chris,
i was wondering how you got on with the blown engine, have ducati stood by it or are you on your own?