If your question was directed to me, it wasn't that bad of a job. The cylinders needed to be cleaned up, re-coated and honed to fit the new FBF 11:1 pistons. Things come apart fairly easily and a good manual (Haynes or whatever) helps a lot and has all the torque specs and such that you'll need. It also gave me the opportunity to "practice" on the valves with the heads off the bike and I now feel very confident adjusting my own valves. You'll need some special tools like a head nut tool and torque wrench, as well as a top end gasket set that comes with all the o-rings, gaskets and such. A couple exhaust port gaskets will be required as well. Reassembly was painless as long as you take your time and check and double check what you're doing. I installed the pistons in the cylinders using a ring compressor before I installed the cylinders on the bike and I didn't have any problems with the rings. If you have the cylinders worked on (re-coated) you'll need the steel "freeze" plugs (3 per cylinder) that seal up the oil galleys in the top of the cylinder. You can get those from any dealer (?), I'd recommend Ducati of Seattle. I'd recommend replacing the belts while you're at it (it's an easy job as long as you're there). The decisions you'll have to make include what pistons/cylinder combination to go for; stock, high comp pistons and stock bore, or a big bore kit. There are several options with regard to pistons and big bore kits, you'll just need to shop/ask around and dicide what you want to do. I suppose the whole job (pistons, cylinders and gaskets) ran me around $600. You can do the big bore thing for a little more than that. Of course this is assuming you do the work yourself. At $65-$80 an hour the cost of the job will go way up if you have someone else (dealer or whoever) do it. Have fun.
