DesmoDog

Yep. About time if ya ask me. Streetbikes, especially those intended to do long miles, do not need desmo valvetrains. You also don't see timing belts. Like I said, put a drive shaft on the thing and they might be on to something! And this coming from a guy who named his dog "Desmo"!

Talking about it already over in the chat section

Yeah, lithium iron batteries are sexy. Everybody who thought the box was empty when they first picked one up, raise their hand... I'm right there with you. tldr version; Old regulator bad. Voltage high. Really high. Victims included fancy new battery, the ECU, and a few other things I've forgotten. Fix is modern MOSFET regulator. Moral of the story - bikes without MOSFET regulators should not be running lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are fragile. The long verison: Of course when the time came to replace the battery in my 1991 Ducati I thought oh yeah, gotta have it. Smaller, lighter, much more better. I ponied up the cash and ordered a fancy new battery complete with built in circuitry to protect the battery from over charging and over discharging. Either case will kill a lithium battery. I got the battery, fit it to the bike, and away I went. About 230 miles later, the bike suddenly died. Then started running again. Ok, it's a Ducati, give it a minute. About ten seconds later the bike died for good this time. I pulled over to the side of the road and as I was removing the seat I noticed a small whisp of smoke. Uh oh... Soon enough smoke was POURING out from under the fairing. Fun fact soon discovered. You can not remove an 851's fairing with the tools supplied in the factory toolkit. For reasons unbeknownst to me, Ducati felt the need to add two very small allen screws holding the fairing together in the front. Time to stand back and hope nothing starts on fire. Luckily this was all happening in front of a fellow motorhead's house. He told me he was looking out the window and when the smoke show started he thought "Wow, that's not the radiator". He came outside, found out what I needed, and got the tools to pull the fairing off. It would have been too late by then if it had been a fire but I still felt better getting them pulled off. At this point I had ID'd the issue as the battery. It was easy to see because the battery was arcing and smoking and melting down. FWIW: The smoke from a lithium battery that is melting down is absolutely horrid. It can't be good for you. Along with worrying that the bike would go up in flames, I was pondering the fact that these batteries are used in aircraft. Holy crap. If this was happening inside an aircraft you'd be seriously screwed. Mental note - if I ever build an airplane, do NOT put the battery in the same cabin as the people. The smoke REEKS, as in I had to leave parts of the bike outside until I could clean them because of how bad it was even after the incident. I have a short video of the show but I apparently can't link it here because it's not hosted on a secure site. I also can't figure out how to embed photos within the post but I'm guessing I can't do that for the same reason. I'll attach them at the end. So what happened? I contacted the battery company and sent the battery back to them. They found that the bike was pumping too much voltage into the battery. I went and checked the voltage and when it hit 16 I stopped testing. Anything over 14.5 volts (I think? it's listed in the battery literature) is too much. I asked about the battery protection and they told me that it was only good to something like 60 volts and my bike must have exceeded that. I also found out that they have upped the protection since then. I'm no electrical engineer so I may have some of the details wrong, but from what I read when a lithium iron battery gets too much voltage fed into it the internals begin plating themselves. Eventually this plating causes an internal short. Once that happens, it's game on until all the smoke is gone. Nothing you can do but stand back and watch the show. The fix was to install a modern mosfet voltage regulator. Google it - there are sources available. I also installed a volt meter on the bike that shows different color LEDs depending on the voltage, they make them specifically for monitoring lithium batteries. I replaced the battery with the same kind that melted down and after a couple years of limited use have had no issues. After the fact I also discovered the ECU had been damaged, along with a couple other electrical parts. The ECU problem revealed itself with a rattle. When I pulled the cover I found some electrical component bouncing around inside, having unsoldered itself from the board. Further investigation showed the liberated part had something to do with overvoltage protection. So to sum it up, lithium batteries require modern charging systems with mosfet regulators. When they meltdown from too much voltage, it's a huge mess. Letting them discharge too much kills them too but with less of a mess.

Dude! I'm here too, you know I can see what you're writing! Sheesh, I'm not sure who this other guy is but I hate him already. Wait, what was the question? Oh, Yeah, sure, it gives me something to do while I phone conference in to the latest 8D meeting. To those of you unfamiliar with an "8D" it is a procedure that is done after a fuck up at work to prevent it happening again. 8 steps including identify who to blame, how to fix it, and whay it will never ever happen again. Step 8 is congratulating the team (who did the 8D). In the ever increasing pressure on doing things faster, some companies now require a 5D, which is an 8D with fewer steps. And that is what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing right now, but in fact the meeting is droning on in my earbuds/work laptop while I type away here on my personal MacBook. Oh hey! I just contributed to the meeting! Had to tell the program manager he was wrong and we shold do it a different way. I'm hoping to get laid off BTW - the severance pay would just about cover to when I plan on retiring anyway. Win/win!

3000 miles in 7 days is 430 miles/day... considering it's 2-3 days on each end to get there and back that seems... optimistic? At least I have cruise now so wouldn't have to hold the damn throttle open all the way across Nebraska...

You know why the wind blows south in Minnesota? Cuz Iowa sucks. (Born and raised in Minnesota...) But Field of Dream fans might like it. Anywhos, Route 66 back in the '50s ('40s? '30s?) was probably pretty cool. Before my time but that's when it's reputation was being made.

After about 25 years of owning only Ducatis, I am now down to ONE streetable Ducati (A 1991 851) and two single cylinder project bikes that have never run while I've owned them. Run, for cripe sakes one of them is being built out of left over parts from other projects so it's never even been a real bike before. I fully intend to replace the Aprilia (An RSV-R I bought to use as a track toy) with a Ducati at some point though. I'll never get back to having five of them ready to go (there's a 160 Monza Jr on the end of that line) but I do plan on having more than one. I'd love to have a V2 as a bookend to the 851 but that's a bit of stretch financially for a guy who wants to retire in July.

Well maybe not ALWAYS...

In younger days... and I had to wait to get the 996 in yellow. They had red in stock but in this case Earache was right. (Don't tell him I said that).

What, and then have to buy a new helmet too? Whataya think, I'm made of money? (I honestly didn't realize it matched my helmet until after I got home)

I've read 505lbs wet, but I've not put mine on a scale. When I'm moving it around in the garage it feels a lot heavier than my Monster 1200S was, but it's a lot taller too so that has something to do with the feel I suppose. When riding it doesn't feel heavy.

Here's the first pic of the V85 after I rode it home from the dealer. The bike was then rolled into the garage, the bags removed, and they've been stuffed on a shelf ever since. Sorry about the crap photo. I'm no photographer and the bike hasn't been anywhere especially noteworthy yet. Next summer I tell ya, just wait and see!

Thanks for the welcome! Though judging by the timing, you guys either have auto replies or you need to spend less time online. ? And yes, I really did name my dog Desmo. He's passed on now but the username carries on. I am quite the Ducati fan boy, I'm not really sure how the V85tt made it in the door but there it is. Speaking of which, I was looking at things yesterday and I'm not so sure the Guzzi will fit through the actual door leading to my winter storage area, so that may be my next adventure. "Home renovations for Guzzi owners". On today's episode we mod the sliding door to make it open wider... But I digress. There's not much that would qualify for adventure riding in my area so I'm mainly here to stalk @Earache. He's kind of a big deal on the internet so I like to keep track of what he's up to.