Strange. From what I have heard, the Testastretta seems to be more resilient to the dreaded rocker flaking. My 749S had over 12K miles when I sold it and none of the rockers showed the flaking the previous 748 series exhibited.

 

No its not the rockers its the cam and porous head castings . seems the heads crack around the area where they exit by the belt , wrecking cam and belts and the pistons.

jerry

 

No its not the rockers its the cam and porous head castings . seems the heads crack around the area where they exit by the belt , wrecking cam and belts and the pistons.

jerry

Never heard of that either. Do you have first hand experience?

 

My bike is an S4 but I am going to bangkok tommorow to look at the damaged bikes, The Thai Dealer has 8 bike with problems , the singapore guys report 7 ,Malaysian dealer has 4 and japan report more than 20 . all testastretta.

It seems that all the problem bikes are off one production run japanese spec, not USA or Euro specification.

my S4 has bad rockers i am tearing the motor down to look how many are bad.
How much are they in the states ?, here they are $250 each.

jerry

 

I believe the Testastretta is a 4th genoration motor. There was recently a recall for electrical issues in the throttle boddies. I just got mine back and it seems like a completely different bike now. Runs, sounds, and idles much better. Not sure what they did but I know the dealer had to get ducati in to help them with it. Its not always good to be the first one to buy something new.

 

OK went to bangkok and looked at the damaged bikes, things are now a lot clearer , there were 2 problems ,
the main problem is a batch of dud head castings affecting 240 bikes made in December 2005 and January 2006 apparently some head castings were given to much gas during manufacture which caused tiny bubbles in the aluminium and castings. These bubbles cause stress fractures and destroy the valve train and then pistons etc. Only bikes sent to Japan ,Malaysia, Thailand , Singapore and Middle East were affected . Ducati will be rectifying affected machines.

The 2nd problem was 4 bikes all Testastrettas supplyed to 4 wealthy Thais who let a mechanic who did not understand Ducatis to service their bikes , he monkeyed around with the valve trains and belts wrecking the top ends , as the bikes are also affected by the other casting problem they will get new heads.

So there u are ,

Jerry

 

well it's nice to hear it wasn't another big screw up by Ducati. They seem like they may be on the right track in public opinion. They don't need another reliabilty shot on their name.

Justin