‘This was the bike’s last-chance saloon’
Dodgy Ducati avoids the scrap heap
This Ducati ST2 had passed through three other workshops and each time its owner had come away with little reward to show for his efforts.
Jim Wright-Roberts, owner of Superbike Surgery, was up next and this was to be the final chance for the misbehaving Ducati. If
Jim couldn’t fix it, then it was destined for the breakers.
Jim adopted his usual methodical approach, kicking off the diagnostic process with a compression test to reveal a perfectly healthy 150psi at both cylinders.
Next, a scan for any faults was carried out and a hunt for anomalies in the live running data. The injection timing data here was reading more than 5.5 milliseconds of fuel at tick-over, double what it should have been! This was one richrunning motorcycle.
“It was also throwing up a coolant temperature sensor fault, even after clearing it. A fault there could’ve caused the rich running, but I couldn’t believe it was that simple.”
After digging into the data PIDs, the readings were coming back a little odd and warranted further investigation. Initially, Jim suspected that a faulty 5V reference wire leading back to the ECU could’ve been the culprit.
While the coolant temperature sensor was coming back as the fault, Jim was hesitant to simply throw a new part at the problem: “Just because the fault code says the temperature sensor’s faulty, it could easily be the wiring.”
The eureka moment came when more of the old Duke’s clothes were removed.
“If I’d have consulted the memory banks, I would’ve remembered that there are two temperature sensors on these. I disconnected the sensor that feeds the ECU, cleaned it up and just like that it was fixed.”
You can see more of Robert’s spannering endeavours, on YouTube (superbikesurgery.tv).