Thought it was about time I serviced the rear hub, quite shocked how much crap had collected in the swingarm in the last 23,000 miles, the stones in it made getting the hub out a bit of a struggle.
Not untypical. I remember many moons ago, there was a plastic ‘plug’ for the hole in the front of the casting of the 9*6/748 SSSA to reduce the amount of filth picked up. Obviously need something similar for the V4. Andy
On my old 1260, when I did the hub service I filled the void with builders foam. An old trick from my VFR days, they had the same problem with the swing-arm filling with road detritus.
Goodness that is truly awful. Surely with this knowledge, Ducati would ensure this was part of a service inclusion. I'll need to check the service detailed listings to verify for myself whether this is the case or not.
I wonder what my 27yr old, 54k mile 916 would look like in there? Though I did replace the hub a few years back and don't recall any mess like that so maybe it doesn't gather there? Reminds me of my old Landrover - had a small rust hole in the bottom of the chassis rail which, on further investigation needed half of the bottom of the chassis replacing and I got 3 buckets full of sand/muck out of that side alone (a bit less from the other) but fair enough, there was decades of off-roading to account for it. I did cut more drain holes into said LR chassis to help it stay clean, maybe the swingarm needs a better drain hole?
The only problem I can see with that is that if/when the foam gets wet, it may never dry encouraging corrosion?
I agree that the drain hole could be bigger, but the amount of debris in that swingarm would plug anything smaller than 5mm
I know it wouldn't let the stones out, but some of the issue with the drain hole is that when it was drilled/ machined out they did not clean the exit of the hole (that's what she said!) so there is a lip around it, that will stop water exiting, I've sorted mine now, as Ducati should have when they built it
