Living with a pre-owned Ducati Panigale 959

The trip was otherwise pretty good, heat on the highway is well contained, bike feels super nimble and is behaved well.

BHPian AtheK recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Mark 13 has been chugging along well, have completed around 2000 km after last service, it's been doing well, except the heat, I thought engine Ice would make a huge difference, but I can hardly make out any difference, if anything I think it's heating faster. Will be changing to something else in my next service, maybe a combination of coolant and water, some more testing needs to be done.

Undertook a long ride to VVS Dam to test the machine and myself, it was a total of around 500 km along with exploring some nearby areas. The roads are amazing, except some stretch before Tumkur, where there are a lot of potholes. Even after being super cautious, I ended up going into few. The trip was otherwise pretty good, heat on the highway is well contained, the bike feels super nimble and behaved well. The road is cordoned off well from any unwanted elements, and you can cruise at some real good speeds. I was accompanied with a friend on his GT650, and even that behaved really well. Was pretty happy with myself to be able to complete this on a Panigale in a day, and surprisingly I was not too tired even after such a long ride in a committed stance. As a matter of fact, we were planning to take a long route back home, when a call from missus dashed any further plans.

Some Images from the trip.

Aftermath of the trip were realized after reaching home, while washing the bike, noticed that lost a fairing screw somewhere and while lubing the chain realized that the chain had become extremely tight. Went to a nearby mechanic and got a screw that fit, but no one nearby had the bit to loosen the wheel to fix the chain issue. It was fixed at Motospark in a visit detailed later. I am planning to buy the bit and keep at home to fix it myself, as I foresee this issue to happen more frequently.

In the meantime, my brother decided to postpone his trip from July to December due to Covid, so got few updates done on the bike from locally-sourced parts.

1. Got a new tank pad from one design. Looks good to me at least.

2. Got PPF done on the side of the tanks as my tank grips are still with brother, and wanted to give protection to the bike.

3. Got some Dainese vinyls done, as I am a big fanboy. As visible in the photos above.

4. Next thing on my mind was the bar end mirrors, the current one though looked really well were functionally near pathetic. They used to vibrate on high speeds and visibility over all was very poor and near about nil in the night. Problem was no good bar end mirrors are available in India and everything is a Chinese knock off, RCB has a decent one, but it is round in shape which won't go well with the Panigale's profile. In one my discussion with my friend he told me that he had nice bar end mirrors on the GT535, and sent me the photos. I really liked what I saw and started the hunt for the mirrors.

These are the RCB mirrors - I will recommend it, if circular mirrors don't look good on your bike. Quality is pretty decent.

These are the GT535 mirrors installed on the bike.

The FOV is still narrow but the build quality is phenomenal, highly doubt if they will vibrate, it's pretty expensive for RE parts also. Wish it had normal mirrors instead of blue mirrors. I will wait for few days to decide if I want to paint them black with a red pinstripe or black paint with a Ducati logo. Good it does not come with any RE branding. Overall I can close this chapter and have it off my mind.

5. The last thing done was battery change, one fine day the bike died and had to be pushed to start it. Happened again after couple of weeks, so it was time to change the battery. Considered a few options including Shido LI ion battery, but nothing was available in the exact size, so ended up going with Stock Yuasa Battery sourced from Ducati.

The chain slack fix, battery and the mirror installation was done at Motospark, and I continue to be impressed by them. I don't have any affiliation with them, but would recommend them to Bangalore SBK owners.

One thing to note was the ride to Motospark from my house which is almost 30 km from my place, the city traffic was extremely crazy and the Panigale was absolutely hot. It hates city traffic more than we do. I hit temperature of 120+ degrees and lot of time speedo ended up flashing HI. The heat escaping from the right fairing is like a steam escaping from a steam kettle, and left a burn mark on my right thigh, I was wearing normal jeans, so maybe the riding pants would have shielded me better. I am really contemplating to get a thigh pad on right leg, and make sure to keep it in my riding bag. The heating issues on this is real and anyone planning to even remotely consider a Panigale as a daily driver needs to be an Ironman. I told Motospark guys next time I will come early morning and leave late night to beat the traffic

These are the few updates and leaving aside heating issues, I am really having a blast on the bike. When you are on highway, the oodles of torque keeps you grinning inside the helmet.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.