Fitted properly?

Spacemonkey... said:

Even the 'test drive paranoia' goes away after you've done a few jobs yourself...

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(rolling around on the floor laughing icon!!) (mind reader icon!!) I took my FL out on the road yesterday after reinstalling the IRD and associated bits - my biggest job to-date. Boy, was I bricking it !!! Expecting it to fall to bits at any moment. I had visions of the front of the prop shaft falling of, digging into the road, flipiping the car over, death, destruction and mayhem on an epic scale at 30 MPH.

It went fine - no problems.

If I'd given it to a garage to sort, I'd probably have picked it up and driven home without a care in the world - even if they had forgotten to put 1/2 the bolts back.

Isn't that the truth? I had the unfortunate experience of having to use a local Ducati dealer to do a job on my Monster that I could not do at the time- can't remember what it was. Anyhow, picked it up and rode the 3-5 miles home, but the bike felt very loose at the front end. Checked it out when I got home to find all the bolts on one fork were just finger tight! I phoned them and fired some fokks into them and they apologised profusely and offered to check all the bolts if I brought it back... I did ask how they expected me to ride it back, but have never been back since. I've had nothing but grief getting so called Ducati specialists to work on the bike. It's one of the very first Monsters so it's not exactly difficult to work on, but they just can't get it right! The only one that was any good was Rosso Corsa in East London and they were ace, but I moved too far away. I do everything now as sod the FDSH. I'm never flogging it, so who gives a damn about silly stamps in the book? Another so called specialist had it in to fit new piston rings. When I changed the oil after 600 miles, a 5" piece of metal rod that hold the hoses around the carb in place fell out of the sump!

That has to be the ultimate fail for any motorbike shop. Just as well you didn't pull any wheelies on your way home

When we moved over here I bought a V8 Disco off of a forecourt. On our first trip out in it, it got to the top of a hill and overheated big time. Luckily it happened right outside a pub with probably the best view any pub could have - so had lunch there After limping home first check was the thermostat - to find there wasn't even 1 there! Back for forecourt - they basically said tough. So to a local LR specialist, they diagnosed and fitted a new viscous fan - $600. That didn't sort it so they dug further and diagnosed 2 warped cylinder heads - $5,000. That didn't sort it, so I gave up on them. Another garage said it would be the rad, forget how much that cost, but it didn't sort it. Took it to another garage and they checked a few things and concluded that the expansion tank cap was holding the wrong pressure - couple of $ and sorted! That was the tipping point for me to decide to get back to doing my own maintenance.

I used to do my own maintenance when I was younger, but 1 job I didn't do was to straighten and install a new engine in a crashed Triumph 1850 I bought off a mate. My uncle did that job in his garage in Canning Town. When I pickied it up to bring it home, it broke down on me in the middle of the Blackwall Tunnel - that was scarey, with lorries screetching to a halt down the tunnel !

haha! That was one of my fave tunnels on my 'Tunnel Run' on the Duc and my old Spitfire! That thing blew a wheel bearing on the South Circular near Catford IIRC at 'rush' hour. Luckily I had one in the boot as I was due to change it, but had to do it at the side of the road with every mentalist buzzing inches away....

mikey7985 said:

Already got one that goes from about 80nm-400nm but need to get a smaller one 10-30 would be ideal. Nearly came a cropper doing the manifold clean!!!!

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That's 2- 3 fingers on the spanner