Oil Filter

[blethermaskite]

So here are my further thoughts on this , every Ducati I have ever owned (that's 14 now) (with the notable exception of my current owned from new 350mk3) has had a full and extensive engine strip down before I have ridden them, so that means they are rebuilt with a serious degree of cleanliness care and attention, there is NO dirt or foreign bits in one of my engines when I put them back together, on that basis and in conjunction with a magnetic trap I frankly don't expect there to be very much in the way of grubby oil that actually needs to be filtered in my engines, the bits that wear away in service are mostly producing microscopic iron or steel dust which the magnet gets, or alloy dust which the centrifuge gets, at my regular oil changes I drain into a scrupulously clean stainless steel drain pan and inspect the oil that comes out for any suspicious material that would maybe warrant further investigation , I only had to do it once when the chrome plating started to flake on the inlet rocker of my 350, the evidence was there , easily identified and repaired swiftly, any other significant "bits" in the oil would be the result of actual or impending catastrophic failure at which point filtering the oil won't really matter much because "is all coming down again" anyway. As a recent case the previous owner of my 250 desmo had suffered a big end failure and it was in that damaged condition when I purchased it, I removed the crank sludge trap bung and the trap was about one third full of ex big end, the rest of the engine was remarkably clean internally, so it worked very well in this instance.
I agree entirely that the Ducati oil filtration system is somewhat antiquated and if a previous owner of a machine has been careless about maintenance there may well be "trouble just round the corner", its is not easy to get at that crank sludge trap and who really wants to take the whole bloody engine apart to get at it! but it works and if you keep the oil fresh and clean.........blah, blah, blah,
Cheers,
George

[Duccout]

George, you are right. Of course it would have been better for Ducati to have fitted a better filtration system, but here we are..... Nigel has told us that he has never rebuilt a road crank twice.... Plus his racing engines can see a ten year life on a rebuilt crank, and no road bike gets hammered like a racing bike. So, the reason for high-end failures is not due to poor filtration, but to the other factors discussed.

[LaceyDucati]

Hi all

Firstly, do I want an external oil filter? No! One of the things I love is the aesthetics of the Ducati single engine. Even though I've been involved in building many race engines, I still strive to keep my engines as standard looking and "unmolested" as possible. I'm okay with non standard, but a relatively sympathetic period look is what I strive for. You won't find any "blingy" blue and red aeroquip fittings on my engines As the years pass I'm also becoming reluctant to irrecoverably modify good standard parts. Most of my top race heads in the past have been created from seemingly "scrap" heads. Trying to maintain a sort of "do no harm" mentality where posible.

I've build hundreds of Ducati cranks and not all pins and sludge traps are really clogged up as suggested (mostly the old first strip cranks). Rebuilt engines with more modern pistons examined after many years of racing don't have anything that I would describe as significant or worrying in their sludge traps or pins.

Bottom line is most of us will be long dead before our Ducati singles see another 20K miles let alone 100K

Regarding the Condor filter, it is only one better than the sqaurecase twin filter as it only filters the oil to the head not the crank!

I have indeed seen a 175 crank completely blocked with carbon! I like some here was of the opinion that the crank would not be blocked after the centrifuge was filled... I stand corrected. What is ever more disturbing is the bike was still running when it was stripped and the bearing was complete and the hardening had not gone on either the pin or rod eye! It was worn from maybe years of use but still functioning.

I will add to this an engine found with no core plug in one side, one with no sludge trap, one with a hole (flaw) from the sludge trap to the outside of the flywheels and another with the hole not seemingly broken through from the timing cover to the timing bush.....all either stopping or severely restricting oil flow to the crank. None of the engines had big ends that had failed as such. I will add one of my customers ran one of my cranks with no feed to the crank for two race meetings as an experiment In mitigation it wasn't new and it was a Yamaha rod with slots on the thrust faces, That crank is still unstripped and in an engine still being used. i wouldn't recommend any of the above, but it does make you think when you find these things!

Nigel

[Duccout]

I remember reading that Taglioni stuck to roller big-ends long after their sell-by date, because of their ability to survive in conditions that would have killed a plain bearing.

[LaceyDucati]

Exactly!

It should be noted that roller bearings are still used in most single cylinder engines including modern off road competition machinery. That said if you read many competition manuals you will be instructed pessimistically to replace the crank after so many hours or hundreds of miles.... The risk of component failure is I guess related due to catastrophic fatigue failure rather than particulate wear. Anyway I've said enough, It's only my opinion and others have other views.

Nigel

[Duccout]

BTW, to give a little balance, a friend of mine used to race a Honda 500 in the UK Sound of Singles championship, and experienced constant big-end failures. Eventually they fitted a Falico rod assembly from the USA, but the team retired from racing before they found out if it cured the problem. The grass is not always greener......

[marsheng]

The debris in the sludge trap I believe is mostly clutch plates. It's a pity I didn't run a magnet through the stuff to confirm my suspicion. If the motor had that much wear material from the rest of the engine, that would be quite a lot of metal.

Cheers Wallace.

[Duccout]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I have just come across an article by the noted Italian journalist Bruno de Prato, who I believe used to be Ducati's Press Officer in the good old days and knew Taglioni. In this article, printed in Cycle World, Mr de Prato relates how Taglioni was very aware of how big-end failures were tainting Ducatis reputation, which was down to 'a total lack of quality control, the cranks were never checked for the correct alignment'. A meeting was set up between Riccardo Engineering and Taglioni to discuss how things could be improved, and Riccardo suggested a change to plain bearing big-ends, which Taglioni was initially resistant to, but came round to in the end.

This would seem to back up the argument that there was nothing wrong with the cranks design, but assembly left much to be desired, probably due to cost cutting.

[Ventodue]

Ah! The same as Tony B's analysis then. Which is interesting, 'cos he told me that as a young whipper snapper he was part of a team that went from the UK to Bologna to help advise on the development of a plain bearing engine (and that Dr. T. was not keen on the idea).

It's always seemed bizarre to me that Ducati called in a British engineering firm to advise on a technical matter that, on the face of it, raised no problems that could not have been sorted by a home-grown engineering consultancy. And that particularly after the failure that was the Ricardo-designed 350cc inline-triple (note the belt drive, btw).

Internal politics had a hand, no doubt.

[Duccout]

I can just picture the scene in the crankshaft assembly shed in the great days of worker unrest, with spiteful workers pressing cranks together and shrugging their shoulders at misalignment. Pressed-up cranks were always going to be a recipe for difficult assembly and high costs, along with bevel gears; no wonder Taglioni was convinced to change. I'd imagine that the fewer human operations are performed in a factory, then the more reliability will improve.

From what I have read, I believe that Riccardo work with almost every engine manufacturer in the world, possibly with the exception of Honda who have their own R+D department, although I don't know how they will survive once we are all using electric powered vehicles. The belt cam drive looks very similar to the Desmoquattro engine and I would guess that Riccardo had a hand in its design in that application.