The engine is toast!

I've only had my MTS1200 a couple of weeks so too early to say how it has fared but the previous owner had no problems in it's 15,000 miles so far.
And just to confound Mr Arquebus, my ST4s has done nearly 50,000 miles, the only failure was the gearchange return spring at 27,000 and it's never been near a main dealer in it's life since it was new. :tongue:
My previous SS did 34,000 and the only failure was the R/R at around 25,000. Maybe I've just been lucky but Ducati failure rates seem no worse than any other makes although sometimes as with any new model there are initial problems.

 

I'm on my 6th Ducati, and 3 of those did over 20,000 miles each, (travelled as far as Morocco where's there's no RAC or AA cover) and the only problem that springs to mind was an after market alarm. They've all been very well looked after by the very capable Neil at Cornerspeed.

My Multi is just under 11,000 miles now and the only problem with that has been a faulty rear shock ecu which was fixed very quickly. My experience with Ducati reliability over the years has been excellent.

Yes the Mutley has a lot of electronics that potentially may go wrong, but thats the price you pay for such a hi tech advanced bike. It's not just Ducati that may have potential electronic problems, the biggest problems on both of my current cars (BMW and Nissan) are strangely enough electrics. The idrive system on my car should be renamed ifail, same as my bloody ifail phone! Bring back good old British bikes with Joe Lucas electrics and points.

 

Often people mention the high tech state of the Multi and subsequent problems because of this , Its actually the basics that go wrong ! Or certainly is in my case , ie sticking exl valve , blown fork seals , crappy back brake , clunky gearbox full of false nuetrals , engine cutting out and the discharging battery , nothing very high tech about any of this , the high tech bits of my bike all perform very well , David Ds disaster is pretty elementry stuff too on the grand scheme of things , valve collet leaping out or whatever it turns out to be .

 

NSM3. I have a warranty with Warranty Direct (I'm in the UK). As a second owner of my June 2010 I couldn't get an extended Ducati warranty. I searched around and WD were the only viable game in town. Their online first quote was quite expensive - north of £400 if I remember correctly - but I called them and got a friendly operator and we negotiated it down to £300. Note that mine is a standard ABS so I used that as a bargaining tool.

Now the proof of the pudding. On my way from Catollica to Provence after World Ducati Week my Multi died on an Autostrada. On to one cylinder for a few hundred meters, then no cylinders. It was a Sunday, and Italy was closed, and I was three weeks over the two year warranty. Having got trucked off the Autostrada it took me two days to get the bike to a Ducati dealer, and I then went on to my friend's house by train. The dealer then had it for four weeks as neither they or the Ducati rep could find the source of the problem initially, and they tried all sorts of things, including changing the ECU. It turned out to be a short circuit in the loom, though goodness knows how that came about as it was on the left near the rear of the tank and not in a stressed, exposed or flexed area. The dealer's bill came to 650 Euro, the bulk of which was for 12 hours labour and the rest for a new rear coil and spark plugs, as the actual repair was easy. Warranty Direct paid up without a problem except they disallowed the spark plugs as a consumable.

So the short answer in my experience is that Warranty Direct are where to go when your Ducati warranty runs out. It is not as comprehensive (no roadside recovery etc) but is certainly better than no cover, and not too pricey.

 

Do we not knowingly take a risk when buying a Ducati?
I mean we buy Ducati because they are lean mean racing machines! This would invariably mean closer tolerances during engine manufacture, higher compression ratios, more torque, bigger power, more stressed engines etcetc.

If we want reliability we would buy Honda or such bikes!

Please don't get me wrong I am not talking down Dave's misfortune, and I would be the first to bitch and moan on this forum if it happened to me, But it's mechanical, high tech mechanical and we need to accept that reliability decreased as the performance increases.

After all I would never expect a Bugatti veron to be as reliable as a Toyota corolla? Bit extreme, but same principle:smile:

 

Wrong sort of toast?

 

Nope 'it's finished '

 

"It's toast!" is a great expression. Don't mess with it.

 

Just read your sad news re the engine. My side casing paint has started to bubble up (11 plate MTS with 1200 miles) so will see if my dealer will sort under warranty? Goes in next week for r/brake&coolant recal. Thanks for the info.

 

Wonder if DavidD is back on the road?
Running in again would be a real pain.

 

Got my generator cover replaced under warranty

 

My bike is currently at the dealers as a result of a similar incident.
The story goes like this : (DavidT, hope you don't think I'm highjacking your thread mate)

Back in June 2012 whilst on a trip in France I had a major mechanical engine noise that at the time I thought was a broken cam follower (it was very top endy). I stopped, but was in the middle of nowhere, so we chose to limp the few miles to the nearest hotel. The bike still ran on both, but pinked if I tried to give it any throttle much above ~3k.
After stopping and then restarting the engine at the hotel, the noise was gone !

We rode the bike to the nearest dealer the following day (40km away), and they could find nothing. Their advice: just keep riding it. Fortunate as we were mid trip
It generally rode OK, just hesitating occasionally. On getting back to the UK I took it to my supplying dealer for a check over and they again said there was nothing wrong, and said it could have been a bad plug ?!? so they changed them.
This despite me asking them to do a compression check (which I don't think they did, even though they changed the plugs).

Anyway, long story short, I took it to my local independent at the end of November to do a compression check as I was not satisfied all was well.
On cranking it over it was obvious one cylinder was spinning over easier than the other, and the bike is more vibey than it used to be, and I was not satisfied the noise I heard was caused by a bad plug, especially since it self-healed (never had a plug do that).

so the readings were 165psi front cylinder, 105psi rear cylinder :/

After 'a few words' the supplying Dealer had the bike in, and Ducati authorised the engine to be checked.
It had its clearances checked / adjusted (Ducati told them to do these before a comp check - personally I would have done a comp check before as well), there were no broken followers as I had expected.
The dealer did a compression check and conceded something was wrong. The heads / barrels came off to find it had broken a ring on the rear cylinder, took a chunk out of the piston,and then tried to eat them, causing fairly impressive damage to the head and piston, and scoring the bore. No idea where the bits went- either out the exhaust or possibly in the sump

The barrel and piston were sent back to Ducati at their request, and it is having barrels / pistons / heads / valve-train for both cylinders replaced. Just waiting on the front head to turn up.

Boy am I glad I took out the extended warranty, and took the decision to have the compression checked despite what two main dealers had said. The annoying thing is, it happened at roughly 12k miles, and its now close on 15k miles. I doubt they would have noticed this at the main service, because a compression check is not part of the service plan...

Oh, and its having its water and generator cases replaced too. :smile:

I've had a number of Ducatis before and never had an issue like this, and never worried about being out of warranty either. I'm going to keep this bike, fingers crossed I don't regret it...

 

It's a valid point, one of the reasons I got rid of my Alfa Romeo when I bought the Ducati is that two highly strung Italians seemed to be too much of a liability. As the bike went Italian, the car went Japanese.

 

Stop worrying me. I still have my Alfa...

 

In the end you either tough it out and accept you may have issues, or like me decide that enough is enough and get rid. Loved the bike hated the problems, put 1200 miles on the Triumph so far with zero issues. Would I buy another Ducati? Perhaps if I had no worries about cash and was able to run it as a second bike to come out every third Sunday when the sun is out and the roads are dry.

 

I think you have hit the nail on the head ! , Ive laid mine up for now as I have to charge the battery up if I dont ride it for more than a week , last couple of months ive noticed a distinct lack of Multistradas on the roads , Plenty of BMWs and other assorted bikes though , just about every Multi ive ever seen is a gleaming showpiece on a sunny summers Sunday ! , Mines covered in mud and cowshit now and parked in the kitchen until I decide ultimately what to do about it ,
They are not reliable and they wont take the wet , the mud , or the cold and salt , shame really as its a beautifull bike with some fantastic attributes but reliability is a utter disgrace and shamefull to say the least and as for Enduro capability then thats the biggest joke of all , it has none whatsoever apart from the riding posistion

 

Dave, you must live in the wrong part of the country then ! :wink:

There are Multis around here every day of the week, rain, shine, even flood.
Last Sunday at my bike clubs meet (fairly comprehensive fog and associated cold / damp weather) there were more MTSs than GSs, RTs, VFRs, etc. It has become the bike of choice for many of those who do true sports touring. Without question all of them ride the bike in any condition. I do too. Its no more fragile than any other bike I've had. My previous ST4S was used by us for 6 years on trips, including getting caught in heavy snow more than once.

My bike will happily sit for a month and quite possibly longer without being plugged in. Only once has it not started when I left the switch down. Maybe you should ask the dealer to check the battery is not losing its capacity ?


Sure there is a bit of apprehension about the fast approaching end of warranty, but I don't consider the bike to be fragile.
It will take the salt etc just as well as my Jap bikes have, and always cleans up well after a spell of riding Shropshire / welsh cow shite / mud covered roads, or anything the rest of Europe has been able to throw at it.

I competed in Enduros for a good number of years so know what a proper off road bike is capable of. Sure the bike is no Enduro bike as such, but neither is a GS, or a 990 Adventure.
They all have a bit of off road capability and I'd gladly hammer the MTS down a forestry fire break, or along a muddy track, as long as it had the right tyres on it. No way would I take any of them into a Welsh bog or Surrey sand pit though.
A good number of my mates attempt to take their GSs down green lanes (one of them works for a main dealer, so cost of parts is not an issue), and all of them have other proper enduro / trail bikes. They do it because it is a challenge, not because the GS is good at it. It would be a challenge on the MTS too

Am I disappointed that my bike had a problem ?
Sure, but now its fixed I'm fairly confident all will be good. I can't wait to get it back and go for a ride

Oh, and can you have a word with my missus, she won't let me bring the bikes in doors. I think she needs retraining. Any tips ?

 

Well my bike wont be in the kitchen forever , the girlfriend is moving in in a few weeks time ! , ive done 10 k on my multi , a lot of it trundling up and down the M5/ M6 between Somerset and Cumbria ,and its very rare ive seen another Multi , did the first 3k in the early part of last year around the Lake District and southern Scotland in mixed weather conditions , mostly very cold and often wet, In case you havent read all my whinges over the last year it goes something like this ..... Ex flapper probs started immediatly after first service , never ever really resolved despite dealer cleaning it up a few times and eventually fitting a new unit, probs started again 2 weeks later ! dealer eventually gave up and disconnected the cable saying id ridden it in salty roads etc and that was the cause , fork seals blew at 3 k , both of them badly , oil pouring everywhere ,again im told its due too salty roads etc , periodic condensation in the clocks , usually clears very quickly though , then the engine starts randomly cutting out increasingly more often untill it starts cutting out when putting into gear , new side stand cut out switch rectifies this , middle of July the discharging battery thing starts , or maybe thats just when I first noticed it , 2 dealers have had it and said battery and bike are ok , I need a optimiser , the electrics of such a sophisticated machine do drain the battery , blah blah blah , Oh and one dealer said leave the switch down and the other said leave it up ! seat lock is on the way out , due prob to constantly taking seat of too charge battery!, back brake is rubbish , gearbox is full of false neutrals especially between 4th and 5th right when you least need it , also more recently the left hand handlebar switch gear buttons have started to not work , adjusting the chain is a miserable process worse than any bike ive ever owned although I have improved my technique , and there is more that ive forgotten ! Reading posts on here I dont think I have any different probs to anyone else , Ive just had it all rolled into one year on one bike , for a 15 k bike its a total disgrace , What makes it all the more painfull is the fact that to ride and look at the bike its absolutely brilliant !