Finally came back from this 4 days road-trip down south. Approximately 1500km round trip. And all that in pretty good company. The bike now has reached 18.000 km which means 6000k since I restarted it last spring. I must confess that I rode that thing a little harder than I ever meant to… But what a blast! The Weber delivered like a dream, never skipping a beat, with many wide open throttle turn exits and the bike was deemed « impressively fast » by all witnesses. And excruciatingly uncomfortable. I don’t notice, you see, I am used to it. But having test ridden a 94 900ss, I realized how « easy » these are in comparison… The frame has to explain the difference. And may be also the forks. Stiff, old fashioned riding. And on the fairly uneven and bumpy back roads of the Quercy, it was challenging… The bike was nicknamed the « Iron Maiden » by my mates. Now on to a deep clean of this evil beauty, before a new addition makes its way into our stable.
Lovely, I know what you mean about wide open throttle on the exits, very thrilling experience, however something you must never never do is brake mid corner as it’ll cause the bike to stand bolt upright and throw the rider clean off…. or so I’ve read
Yep, the only brake I personally use in those corners I may have entered over optimistically fast, is the rear.
This morning, it was a deep clean/check up for this lady. During our recent trip, there was a bit of rain involved. Not so much as we were riding (30 minutes total on Friday), but heavy rains all night Friday to Saturday. With bikes parked outside in the open. That, and after over 5000km without any checking, the clutch was one of my priorities today. Everything was still working perfectly, easy to find neutral, no groaning, etc. But for how long? Loads of friction dust and some light surface rust appearing on the springs. 45 minutes to get the discs out, blow the dust out of everything, clean, grease where needed and it looks like new again. Take care of your dry clutches and you will have many happy miles!
I am so happy today as I finally found (and received from Japan) a part that I have been searching for a while for this bike: a vintage radiator guard. It came with a spare nose fairing, which ain’t too bad either, really. Happy times!
And there it is on the nose cone. It’s perfectly adjusted, looks really clean and even OEM. I find this really cool.
It’s been a while since I last posted about this Weber carburated 900 Supersport. We are now approaching 20.000km. I have had a couple issues since my last post, which where both addressed. The first was a very annoying intermittent ignition cut off, with a loud bang each time. I first re-checked the harness. Interestingly enough, I did find some (r/r) melted wires hidden under a very clean looking piece of heat shrink isolation. I got all this cleaned up and fixed. But unfortunately, this did not fix the issue. I then checked the (iridium) spark plugs and found out one of them had a very dirty electrode, with a build up of crusty dirt of some sort. I understand some bikes don’t like iridium plugs. I swapped them with standard plugs and since then, the gremlin is… gone! Then last weekend, first spring ride, all was well and when I got back, moving the bike in the garage, I heard a weird « clonk clonk clonk » noise coming from the rear wheel. Looking closer, and inside the wheel hub, I noticed something amiss with the rear sprocket carrier. One of the bolts had snapped. I still do not know what may have caused this. I checked this when I recommissioned the bike, and torqued the 6 sprockets bolts carefully at 48 Nm. I also aligned the wheel with a laser tool. Well, these are almost 40 years old, so I decided to replace them all with new ones. Looking clean and tight now. Took a quick snapshot of the rear of the bike before mounting the rear hugger and the exhaust silencers. Bike looks very racy like that. Street legal means a heavier rear. Still looks lovely to me though.
Good Lord! Did you have any more idea as to what may have caused this? I'm not familiar with the model but I'm assuming there is some form of cush drive, so perhaps the rubbers have gone hard and/or worn which allows a little too much movement.
@Andy Bee There are indeed independent rubber dampers that are inserted in the wheel hub itself (same wheels as 1989-1990 851s). They were all replaced by new ones when I recommissioned the bike 3 years ago. The bike had very low miles when I bought it (12.000km). May be one of the bolts snapped due to some defect in the metal after I reached the 20.000km mark? Also, I ride this bike in a pretty « spirited » way (as it should be, imho), with WOT action every now and then when exiting nice opened corners and all, so maybe I am sometimes asking too much? Unlike the 851 and 916, I can handle WOT without shitting my pants, on this one…
Honestly, I wouldn’t judge the whole concept just on this particular mishap. I never experienced this issue before on any of my other 90’s Ducatis in many happy miles.
I like it . I don't tend to treat mine to gently when out for a blast! . It's only when i'm looking at her when i'm putting her away that I feel guilty and think I shouldn't have opened her up so much as she's over 30 years old , but she seems to love it and it's just such fun !
