Rode home from work today and dropped into a friends house. On leaving the house I took the bike off the sidestand and an small amount of coolant came out of the belly pan.......hmm At home, fairings off bike on paddock stand and there was evidence that there had been a leak but running up to and above fan temp there was nothing obvious. But with the engine off and bike on sidestand there was coolant running down the LHS of frame. On investigation the coolant header cap was a little loose. Tightened up the cap. Another paddock stand run and then onto sidestand and there was still a little coolant running down the frame but significantly less. So is it likely to be fixed or am I more likely to need to change the header tank for the common split problem? Are there any other likely / frequent areas/pipes etc that could be the culprit? Also reading the haynes manual, is there an easy way to check the header cap for release pressure?
I have had a radiator cap leak through not being tightened quite enough but it never resulted in that much water loss. There are two tubes that come off the top reservoir tank you might want to check they have not perished. The radiator cap neck can possibly leak as it is only sealed by an O ring. I found one once that did this when cleaning up a spare tank. Beyond that it could be a split tank as you mention. The tank could be pressure tested but you will need a tester that has a fitting for a Ducati reservoir cap. I guess that's Ducati only territory or you could just blow air into the tank using an airline and low pressure using one of the outlets to the tank. Hope this helps
Split tank is common and may only leak when very hot. My 916 got through about 6 tanks before fitting an aluminium tank. My 'record' was 3 in a year, one of which leaked after 10 miles... None of the replacements lasted as long as the original. I also had the lower (overflow) tank leak but that was due to the feed where the pipe fits snapping off.
I've got a spare tank, guarantee leak free, only removed as i've had to fit the race style round the head stock type. Let me know if it turns out to be the cause and you want it and we'll sort something out. I read on hear once about a leak that was found by blowing flower over the suspect areas and tracing the resultant wet gloopy mess to the highest point. Just needs washing off when done.
Thanks for all the responses. I will whip the fairing, tank and airbox off this weekend to give it a good dose of looking at and see where the water is escaping from. I may then be giving you a shout 1037SPS as I suspect the tank will be the culprit one way or another.
OK Job Done. No more leaking coolant. Though I was suspicious that it may have just been a leaking O Ring on the on the aluminium that sits into the coolant bottle I picked up a bottle anyway at Ducati Manchester. Working on the 996 is relatively easy, everything seems to come to bits easily and is designed to be taken to bits. One slight worry on starting the bike up again was the steam off the radiator....lots of it. After a while of looking over the radiator there were no drips of coolant but there were signs of coolant in the matirx. Then I realised that when the bottle was off I had squeezed one of the coolant pipes, which must have covered the radiator in coolant. .......doh. A dowsing in clean water later and following a ride out all was well.....no leaks confirmed.
Glad it's fixed now, it's always a relief to sort out niggling problems and Ducati's do sometimes have their share
