No problems with three year old Motobat battery for my 999S. I keep mine on a Datatool battery tender all year round and tend to run the engine all year round, too, even if the bike stays garaged Dec - Feb. With a decent secondary earth in place (thanks Exige), the engine turns over with great enthusiasm.
Now spark plugs, it looks like the oem equipment is the NGK MAR10AJ although some appear to fit the CR10E1X. Anyone changed theirs?
After much deliberation, I fitted NGK Iridium plugs to my 999 and they work perfectly. The idle is steadier and I get better, smoother drive from low revs. The advantage of Iridium is that they are pretty much fit and forget - they should last for tens of thousands of miles. Also, they 'like' a large plug gap, which makes for a fatter spark, which is why you get a more reliable idle and better throttle response. The disadvantagE of NGK plugs is that the hexagonal flats your plug spanner locates on are further down the plug body than on Champion plugs, this causes a problem because the 'plug hole' in the head is tapered. To get round this, just use the standard Ducati plug spanner that comes in the tool kit and file off the corners at the bottom of the spanner. This allows the spanner to slide down far enough to engage the flats on the plug.
Thanks Old Rider. I don't have the ducati tool kit and believe its a pig of a job with the standard NGK plugs so I am going to fit them rather than make work for myself.
Also, the new battery is a larger capacity (12ah) and is also physically larger. I had to remove the rubber base and the two rear round rubber bungs inside the battery casing to accommodate it. Could this cause any issues? The battery is specified to fit the 1098 so I assume they realised it would be operating without the rubber cushioning in place.
I changed the plugs on Friday, they were black and had obviously been flooded. I imagine the battery did not have enough in it to fire the bike up and constant attempts had simply fouled the plugs. I put the new ones in, new battery installed and a gallon of fresh petrol and she fired up first time.
