Temperature Related Engine Trouble - RESOLVED(?)

[needtorque]

Just a thought but check the fuel filter for clogging.

[rmcobb]

Hey Mongoose,

Any headway with your problem?

Seems we may have a similar problem with our 05 620. During a recent trip, encountering high altitudes and temps, the bike would continually stall and wouldn't idle (idle was at 900-1000 rpm) and then would stall.

[64duc]

If it runs all right at lower altitudes and not at higher, it may be too lean.

Just went back and looked at your plugs. They are a little on the lean side.

[MotoMongoose]

Work has kept me pretty busy lately so it's been a while since my last update.

I'm still having the same trouble, but I went to my track day anyway. It was a blast even though my bike was a dog on the straights. Fortunately, the Streets of Willow is pretty tight and twisty, so it didn't matter that I couldn't coax the bike past 90 mph. I attached a picture of me that was taken by my friend after he lowsided his ZX-6R in a banked turn (the bowl). Still need to get comfortable with hanging off the bike, as I actually ground a little aluminum off my right foot peg and brake pedal in one of the turns. That'll come with time, as I've only been riding a little over a year.

Back to the engine trouble.

I've had more contact with Ducati North America, but their trouble shooting procedure has been pretty slow and very conservative. Step one was to replace my K&N filter with an OEM filter and ride it for a week to see if that did anything. Step two is to refit the evaporative filter that I removed and see if that helps. I don't think that the guy I'm dealing with has any technical knowledge; he's just moving me through a checklist. That's fine, but in the mean time I've started to set up another solution.

Last Friday I ducked out of work after lunch and rode down to my 'local' dealer in the afternoon. In the past, neither of us have been able to reproduce this behavior at their shop, but I had a hunch that it just wasn't warm enough. So I got down there at the hottest part of the day during one of the hottest months of the year, and sure enough the engine was still stumbling. Hooray! It was more severe when I left home (~105 deg F) then when I arrived (~85 deg F), but there was still nothing subtle about it. Now I have a service appointment set up for a couple of weeks from yesterday and we'll see what they can do now that I know they can reproduce the problem.

Thanks again for all the help. I'm still looking to check out anything that you guys can think of. I'll keep everyone posted on my progress.

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[MotoMongoose]

Finally, my problem is resolved; unfortunately the solution is a little less than clear.

Since I was able to replicate my problem while I was at the dealer, I left my bike with them again to see what they could do. They said that they found a fault code in the ECU when the bike was running very, VERY hot. The tricky part was that these fault codes are supposed to be stored by the system so they can be read latter, but this one was clearing itself. Once they found it, they decided to replace the ECU.

The thing that made me skeptical about this solution is that the problem they found is not the same as the problem I've been having. My bike would run poorly when it first started up in the afternoon after sitting all morning. Thankfully it runs great now, as I was riding around in 101o heat yesterday with no stumbles at all.

What this means is that either they found a different symptom of the same problem (the ECU), or something they did after replacing the ECU fixed the problem (reset TPS, removing and reattaching connectors, etc.). It's possible that, if my ECU was having problems with high ambient temperatures, by getting the bike extremely hot they were able to create a local ambient temperature that caused the same problem. Just a theory.

In any case, I can finally start putting on miles again.*

If anyone else has problems like these I hope their closest dealer/shop is closer to thier climate than mine is!