Ducati First ride from Pune to Bangalore and First Service

We left Pune around 5am and reached our home in Electronics City by 4:30pm, way way ahead of my expectations. I recently did exact same distance (approx 990km) in my car and it took us around 1 hr more.

Experience:

  • Bike is amazing. Very smooth. 0 vibrations, very good handling. We were mostly cruising between 110-120kmph. Varsha did force me to go till 140 once but that was just once. I don’t enjoy high speeds (120 is not high).
  • Our plan was to get side panniers but we didn’t like what Ducati offers so we had a small bag with us, that made the trip little uncomfortable.
  • We took around 4 small breaks (3 – less than 10 mins, 1- almost 30mins).
  • Just faced three problems:
    • When we started it was dark and the lights would blink everytime there was a hump or rough road.
    • 4 times cruise control got cancelled on its own.
    • One lady decided to come in front of the bike when I was at 100, applied sudden breaks which resulted in rear tyre skidding (very minor). I wasn’t expecting any skidding at all.
  • We didn’t take any pictures (I regret it now) because we thought we will get really late and tired so lets rush.

Once we reached Bangalore I took bike for registration etc and it was time for first oil service. When I gave it for service I had long list of issues:

  • I took bike for small rides around home-office and it didn’t start on first attempt, couple of times it took more than 3 tries.
  • Once I got low battery error indicator
  • Every rough road, head lights were still blinking
  • Engine diagnostic lights was always on
  • Just few Kms before the service station I got a new error: DRS error lights were on, ABS and DTC lights were blinking
  • Break pads were making squeaking sound
  • I wanted to reduce seat height.

Experience at VST Ducati, Service.

I wanted to service my bike on Saturday so that I can stay there talk to technicians as I had several questions before I go on my 6000Km ride next month. They were too busy and asked me to get an appointment first. I took appointment for Monday 10am. I reached there but I was told they were already working on a bike and will start working on my bike once they finish that which would be till 12-1. Also given the list of issues they were not sure if they can finish my bike the same day. I was advised to leave the bike and come back next day. Unfortunately  I was leaving for singapore same night so asked my cousin to pickup the bike. They promised to call him at the end of the day with an update. He never received any call so he just walked in next day. He had to wait till afternoon till they finished all the work. Looks like there was a lose connection with battery which was responsible for all errors and blinking headlight.

They couldn’t reduce the seat height as one part was missing. They forgot to ask me about it the first day so I didn’t give to them, actually I couldn’t have given to them anyways because Bavaria Ducati forgot to give me at the first place 🙂 Why can’t they have a simple checklist 🙁

bike-seat-partYou can remove seat padding, which comes by default and once you do that there is a gap between rider and pillion seat so this part is to fill/close that gap.

Anyway, I have my bike with me.

Ducati first service bill

I am starting my training based on some of the following videos from tomorrow 🙂

Reason for training?

  1. I am still nervous about the weight and height of the bike.
  2. I have issues with heavy bikes and hair pin bends with steep climb (Fallen thrice on hair pin bends, and once when I couldn’t handle the weight of bike while putting it on stand and broke my ankle)
  3. For my november trip I am really worried about this section:
    1. http://www.rollingwheels.in/main/2014/08/21/sandakphu-2014/
    2. http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travelogues/179434-sandakphu-north-sikkim-scorpio.html

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