[Entsurgeon]

The heartache, the elbow grease and Revenge of a pissed off Panigale Designer

There's something supernatural about my bike and alignment of stars. She's been out of action pretty soon after the last service. Like I mentioned I changed her spark plugs 7 months ago, within 10 15 kms, she got lumpy a few hundred metres from home as i began to ride. Limping home, i tried to make out what could be wrong. Since she was serviced recently, my doubt rested on things that may have got disturbed during servicing her. She was vibey, asthmatic and was putting out probably 20 25 bhp .

After a little brainstorming, throttle body cleaning and injector cleaning, the fault finally was found out to be in a failed spark plug. It was so frustrating to not be certain of diagnosis and having negative thoughts about what is wrong, the news of failed spark plug change came as a big relief. At one point I was contemplating if I ll need to open the engine and cure a compression leak. You see, I didn't really expect the newly changed plugs to go kaput within a few weeks and 15 kms of working fine and as such didn't consider this possibility. After changing them few weeks and barely 15 kms back, a blown plug was last thing on my mind to check. Not the one to ride this bike when its less than perfect, the bike was just being cranked, idled until it reached fan spinning 103 degrees every week or so. This went on for nearly 6 months until i could get a pair of ngk MAR9A-J plugs.

as she stand proud on the guard


Also thanks to stars being aligned in my favor, i was helped by an experienced SBK mechanic who came recommended by fellow ducati owners in Indore. The guy set his shop an year ago and used to work in Mumbai on SBKs for decades. After the injector and throttle body cleaning and replacing the air filter, we got onto changing spark plugs.

The tray full of her organs as she undergoes surgery


the tank needs to completely come off for the throttle body job.


The rear spark plug and air filter can be changed without taking whole of the tank off. You can simply rotate it up hinged anteriorly.

Covering your trails


As you open the throttle body at your home and send the injectors for cleaning, you make sure no rats or squirrel leave their marks there while you re gone.

the additional ports of rapidbike evo


While we were brainstorming for faults, we first unhooked the whole rapidbike evo loom to check if the problem was because of a faulty evo. It wasn't. Evo replugged.

the outgoing airfilter and plugs.


They are the elusive mar9aj

Tale of a pissed off design engineer

This bike has 2 cylinders having 1 plug each. Called vertical and horizontal cylinder as per their orientation, the head of vertical is under the front seat. You remove open the seat, remove ( or just rotate it up after unhooking) the tank and change the rear spark plug. Recessed deep inside, the plug has a 14mm screw and only the thinner plug spanner can access it. Our normal tool for a 16mm plug wouldn't go inside the plug borehole on the head cover. However the job is easy and I've done it myself before.

The horizontal or the front cylinder lies anterior to the vertical and is positioned just behind the radiator. To say it is much more tougher to change this plug would be a huge understatement. Panigale has 2 radiators. An upper and a lower one. Theres a horizontal plastic sheet running across separating both. This part has a small cover that, when opened lies right over the plug lead. Ordinarily one would just pull out the lead, unscrew the plug using the plug spanner provided in toolkit and do the reverse after replacing the new plug. Should be a 5 minute job. Intelligent. Right?

I don't know what pissed off the person who designed this part of panigale and why he decided to take out his frustration and/or vengefulness on us owners. Since the plug is buried deep into head cover, the lead is around 4.5 inches long similar to many modern cars. While you can inspect the lead from the window, touch it, kiss it. You cant pull out a 4.5 inch long tubule from the window. Theres absolutely no space for the lead cable to move. Its snug fit between the head cover and radiator.

But there's a very easy solution for this though. Take off all the fairings. Unscrew a few nuts from radiator shroud tail from under the body near radiator fan. Unhook a few hoses ( draining the entire radiator fluid- blessings in disguise for those who were impatient to fill her up with engine ice) to help easy rotation of radiators within the shroud towards front wheel pivot up. This gives you all the space you need to change the plug. Initially there used to be youtube videos of people taking off whole radiators and front wheels to change the plug. Then came a smart guy who told about the rotation technique. And finally now, we can do it by just lifting the upper radiator a bit after unscrewing.

This means from a 8 hour job, the front plug change, from reducing to a 4 hour rotation job, has now reduced further to just a 2 hour job under a skilled ( and expensive) mechanic. As a bonus, after doing this tight space, all the other tight nooks and crannys under the fairing which seemed to be tricky to reach for cleaning etc no more seem tighter. You feel like theres a whole basketball court worth of space between for example your hubs and the swing arm or lower triple clamp and tank mounts.

To whomsoever designed this part, Hats off to you sir. Your revenge stands complete yet unfinished.

Tireless riders on their magnifique italians

Partly thanks to omicron and covid, even tires were sourced with difficulty. Well I didn't want any tire. It had to be Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsa 2. Stock were Diablo Rosso corsas. The rear size is an oddity at 180/60 17. Usually the size is 180/55. This tire is taller and helps quick flickability and quick direction change on tracks. This is why 899 has its own fan following among riders. However the only company that provides this size is Pirelli. One can substitute it with190/55 though bartering a little less flickability.

Anyway. Once all the hiccups were sorted, new air filter and plugs installed. I took her out to a tire shop.

The tiring tale

Not too bald at the centre, these tires came stock in 2015 bike and had manufacturing dates somewhere around july august 2014. Almost 7 years. Here. The next image shows you what happens to an old tire.

The cranky tire


Can you spot a few cracks? Check the big one in floor of the groove.

The stock Pirelli Diablo Rosso Corsas ( rosso=race corsa=track) are good for occasional track days and better suited for wet riding then supercorsas which have hardly 20% as many grooves as rosso corsas. The confusion begins when Pirelli sells tires christened Rosso, Rosso2,Rosso III, Diablo and Diablo2. Anywhere i asked for Diablo Rosso Corsa 2, the boots that come stock nowadays on monsters and Panigale V2, I was answered them to be in stock but on asking for pics I d find them to be one of these other tires. The grippiness rankings of Pirellis stands somewhen like Supercorsas>Rosso corsa II> Rosso corsa>rosso 3,2,1 > diablos> remaining types. They also have somewhat same rankings price-wise.

However I avoid Supercorsas for 2 reasons-
1. They are riskier in wet.
2. The kind of temperature they need to get to for best performance is practically impossible on roads.

For me triple compound DRC II for now. And in 180/60 ( against the common 180/55) they are unicorns.
Luckily one of a fellow track-junkie owner of a Panigale V2 took out brand new DBR2 and installed supercirsas on showroom floor itself and put up a for sale message on ducatisti group. The guy offered me additional discount if i agreed to do upcoming tack day at BIC

He preferred to sell locally and my sisters from Mumbai are as wise about tires ( checking sidewall bubbles, punctures etc) as I am about household chores. Against all the wisdom and cautiousness advised in an online deal, I took the leap of faith thinking the guy is on our watsapp group. Many people would know him personally and lastly, i didnt have a choice. The tires got delivered on wrong part of the town ( Mumbaikars would know this) same day and were shipped by my sis too. That it was a lazy, traffic less sunday helped. I had my PDRC 2 in my hands next day.

Fresh off a Freshly delivered V2, they were as new as new can get.


As cheap as poor superbiker would dream of.

How I met your Rubber

I can say I went to a tire changing shop and got old ones out and new ones fitted. Read on to know how easy it is for superbikes.
I have a puncture shop right in front of my house. ( Okay okay. Its 27 metres and 80.04 cms from the gate). Good to inflate my tires for a city ride. Not good for anything else. I asked around and had to go to my friend and fellow rider ninja 1000 owner) who recently started a dealership of Pirelli. This one is around 10 Kms from my home. He understands superbikes and knows about tires.

To change a tire, one needs to take the whole wheel off. On a Superbike, this is taken care of by people having tools to open axle nuts and ability to reinstall Fork/swingarm sliders. The Tire shop was right next to a SBK (not ducati) showroom and was our default choice to get them off for changing tires. They fell short of a tool and recommended another showroom who had that oversized tool. Again, leaving the showroom right next door, we had to head to the one a mile away. Mile and half if you include the visit to next U turn point and back.

Without the Good Years blessings.


my friend was adamant not to mount wheels on their equipment without removing brake disks.


The machine is the same one used for car tires. The hydraulic pressing arms may get stuck to disk and bend em.





Forgive me but what happened next warrants a very elaborate post and a few bold line.

The boot change was the story from last week. Wednesday to be precise. As i mentioned, I opted for additional discount for the tires and now I had a commitment to keep.

I took her to tire shop on Wednesday. The plan was to get new tires installed in a few hours and put the Panigale on a trailer the very next day. Few things happened that afternoon.

1. I wrapped up my day early afternoon to reach tire shop around 2pm for what seemed to be a 2 hour job tops.
2. The showroom next door lacked one large spanner ( of course they did. It was a Ducati-Tax we had to pay).
3. Talking to and taking her to next place a mile away at our own pace meant 2 hours were already spoken fir and we have only mounted the bike on the works table with scissor lift.
4. The rear disk , mounted by 6 star headed nuts had 1 nuts head slip and we had to open it up using a hex, lot of wd40, even more cuss words and and hour extra.
5. As we were ready with new tires mounted on alloy rims, we had our friend from previous showroom visit us.
6. He brought with him 2 news-
a. My tire dealer friends mobile wasn't reachable for past half hour ( despite being in network) and
b. The previous workshop where we took out the wheels and where the bike stood awaiting them closed an hour ago and opens next day 11 am. ETD 12 pm next day.

An hour later, me and few of my fellow bikers were going crazy as we just got the news that a trailer on which i was supposed to load my bike and ship her, was due 6 am next day and thats when i should be ready with my bike on my city byepass to load her. Now this trailer had 7 8 other superbikes loaded on her to be taken to the track and there was no way we wouldn't let them delay by 6 7 hours.

Stars aligned again and next day, trailer showed up not long before i got ready with her. You wont find many owners spending a grand on fitting 2 tires, spending twice that much to those who took off and reinstalled the wheel and still feel happy about it.

Heres the reason for that happiness-


I hope it wasn't a boring story. Well it was a happy ending at least.