Living with a Ducati 899 Panigale: Maintenance updates

The superbike got multiple updates, including an air filter & spark plug replacement as well as a tyre change.

BHPian Entsurgeon recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

There's something supernatural about my bike and the 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 km, 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 the diagnosis and have 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 km of working fine and as such didn't consider this possibility. After changing them a few weeks and barely 15 km back, a blown plug was the last thing on my mind to check. Not the one to ride this bike when it's less than perfect, the bike was just being cranked, idled until it reached a 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 stands proud on the guard

Also thanks to stars being aligned in my favour, I was helped by an experienced SBK mechanic who came recommended by fellow Ducati owners in Indore. The guy set his shop a 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 is full of her organs as she undergoes surgery

The rear spark plug and air filter can be changed without taking the 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 rapid bike Evo.

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

The outgoing air filter 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 to 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 headcover. 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 tougher to change this plug would be a huge understatement. Panigale has 2 radiators. An upper and a lower one. There's 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 the 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 the 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. There's absolutely no space for the lead cable to move. It's a snug fit between the headcover and radiator.

But there's a very easy solution for this though. Take off all the fairings. Unscrew a few nuts from the radiator shroud tail from under the body near the 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 an 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 crannies under the fairing which seemed to be tricky to reach for cleaning etc no more seem tighter. You feel like there's 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 tires. 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, a new air filter and plugs were 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 on the 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 than supercross which has hardly 20% as many grooves as Rosso Corsa. 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 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 stand somewhen like Supercorsas>Rosso Corsa II> Rosso corsa>rosso 3,2,1 > diablos> remaining types. They also have somewhat the same rankings price-wise.

However, I avoid Supercorsas for 2 reasons:

• They are riskier in wet.
• 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 owners of a Panigale V2 took out brand new DBR2 and installed supercirsas on the showroom floor itself and put up a for sale message on Ducatisti group. The guy offered me an additional discount if I agreed to do the 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 WhatsApp group. Many people would know him personally and lastly, I didn't have a choice. The tires got delivered to the wrong part of the town ( Mumbaikars would know this) the 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 the next day.

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

As cheap as a 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. It's 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 km 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 the ability to reinstall Fork/swingarm sliders. The Tire shop was right next to an 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 that had that oversized tool. Again, leaving the showroom right next door, we had to head to the one a mile away. A mile and half if you include the visit to the next U-turn point and back.

Without the Goodyears blessings.

My friend was adamant not to mount wheels on their equipment without removing brake discs.

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

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

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

I took her to the 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. A few things happened that afternoon.

1. I wrapped up my day early afternoon to reach the tire shop around 2 pm 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 the next place a mile away at our own pace meant 2 hours were already spoken for and we have only mounted the bike on the works table with a scissor lift.
4. The rear disc, mounted by 6 stars headed nuts had 1 nuts head slip and we had to open it up using a hex, a lot of wd40, even more, cuss words and an hour extra.
5. As we were ready with new tires mounted on alloy rims, we had our friend from the previous showroom visit us.
6. He brought with him 2 news:

• My tire dealer friend's mobile wasn't reachable for the past half hour ( despite being in-network) and
• The previous workshop where we took out the wheels and where the bike stood awaiting them closed an hour ago and opens the next day at 11 am. ETD 12 pm next day.

An hour later, I and a 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 that's when I should be ready with my bike on my city bypass 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 the next day, the trailer showed up not long before I got ready with her. You won't 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.

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