The Aftermath: Ducati NA Calls
I could barely sleep last night. All evening I kept thinking about the Duc. I tried my best to put yesterday out of my mind, but unfortunately when you watch your Duc spew oil for the second straight ride in just about a month the mental images from the day seem to get the best of you. So when I got up this morning I couldn’t help but feel a bit sick to my stomach. There’s an unfortunate reality that sinks in when something like this happens. Suddenly all you want to do is ride again. Somehow find a way to forget that this even happened. Yet that’s not an option. The bike is broken. Again. It’s at times like this that I’m quite frankly amazed at how large the blogging world seems to have become - almost overnight. In only hours after I posted about yesterday, I instantly got a number of emails from people I’ve never even met offering their condolences. It seems a death to your bike is akin to a death in the family in the real world. Absolutely amazing. Perhaps the biking brotherhood is bigger than I thought and if anything it certainly makes you realize that you’re not alone at times like this…
When I got to the office this morning in an odd way I didn’t quite feel as alone as I thought I would. So around 10 AM I promptly put in a call to Ducati North America’s customer service division just as Jake over at ProItalia had suggested I do while we were chatting yesterday about the bike. He passed along the name and number of a fellow named Mike Norman. When I placed the call, my immediate reaction was ‘oh shit here we go again’… No one seemed to be in the customer service office. Instead of a human being I got voicemail that said that someone from DNA would get back to me in four to five business days. I don’t know about anyone else but the idea of waiting four or five days just to start a conversation with someone about the bike struck me as semi-insane. So I waited a few minutes and then redialed. Instead of heading to the DNA customer service extension, I shuffeld my way through the options and found a operator. The gal quickly connected me to Mike’s direct line. Again I left a voicemail. At that point things didn’t look so hot.
About ten minutes later the phone at the office rang and it was Mike. When I got on the phone he; a) already knew who I was, b) had already heard about the problem from Jake @ PI and c) was already working on a solution.
At this point I don’t have a clue how this will all shake out, but I have to give some serious props, first to Jake @ PI for really being on the ball and secondly to Mike over at DNA for really making me feel like someone at DNA cares about their customers. Less than an hour after I got off the phone with Mike, another DNA customer service rep named Daniel called to confirm my conversation with Mike and go over more particulars about the broken bike.
To be quite honest, I’m amazed how fast DNA seems to be moving along. I was expecting a process similar to what MotorMilt & I went through with State Farm when the 749’s were stolen. During that fiasco life seemed to stop and there was so much battling back and forth between parties. Today was completely different. Both Mike & Daniel seemed to truly understand how I was feeling and both set a vibe over the phone that they were trying their best to find a fair solution. Both men were very clear that they couldn’t promise anything as of yet and that they had to talk to their superiors before any resolution could be discussed in more detail and that’s cool. I get that there’s a system at play here and that these sorts of things take some time to work out. Yet somehow when I left the office today I couldn’t help but feel like I was in good hands and that all the horror stories that you hear or read on the web about dealerships or manufacturers screwing customers over wasn’t going to happen. And if things turn out the way they seem to be heading and that’s the Ducati Ownership Experience that’s pretty damn good.
The Italian Diva Sings… And Dies Again…
Perhaps somethings in life are not meant to be… I was just about to hit 2,000 miles on the ‘03 749 when it got stolen. Today, I was microns away from 2k with the ‘04 999 when all hell broke loose. I hate to say it, but after today I think it’s time has come.
Unfortunately it’s been a bitch of day and right now as I sit here typing this, I find myself questioning my loyalty to the Ducati Ownership Experience. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the bike when it works. So much of today was amazing. After being away from the bike for so long, it was absolutely awe inspiring to finally get back on it and start to break in a fresh set of tires. To experience a superbike roaring through the twists and turns in all their glory. The canyons were alive like I haven’t seen them in quite sometime. Amazingly really. Life it seems has comeback in full force after all the rain we got over the winter. The flowers are in full bloom and the roads are starting to finally dry off. Today was one of those days where every corner felt like a postcard. Amazing sight after amazing sight. Vistas from every angle and beauty beyond belief, even for someone who knows the canyons as intimately as I do. One of those days when you rediscover what it is that you love in life.
But then the shit hit the fan…
I’ve spent the past month waiting diligently for the gang at ProItalia to put my Duc back together after it gushed oil out of the airbox after my trackday experience at Willow Spring. Those sort of things aren’t supposed to happen to what is a basically brand new Italian Superbike, but they do. Even though I baby my Diva, I knew full well what owning a Ducati meant when I threw down for one a year ago. You don’t have to do much research to find out that Italian bikes require quite a bit of love & tender care… And even with that they still break. I get that and I got that then… They’re simply not run of the mill, 100% perfectly machined beasts straight from the factory. That’s life and you can bitch about it all you want, but the reality is that either you choose to except it or you don’t. That’s the game.
So after Willow Springs when the engine locked up and the ProItalia boys told me that this was a ‘known issue’ with certain ‘04 models, I didn’t complain. I got it and let them be. That’s the deal you make when you purchase on of these magnificent beasts. The PI boys subsequently replaced the cyclinders, pistons, top end gasket, exhaust gasket, and drilled a new crackcase vent hole in accordance with Ducati’s new design specs on the ‘05 models. (Now, mind you that if BMW found a design flaw in their parts they redo the CAD and re-machine replacement parts for all the bikes. Ducati’s solution? Drill holes… If that ain’t an Italian answer I don’t know what is 
)
Late last week I got my Diva back. She was running so smoothly this morning it was just simply wonderful. Few things can give you chills running down your spin like firing up your Duc for the first time in a month. My only complaint was that the PI gang seemed to move the engaging point of the clutch further back (i.e. less pull on the clutch leaver resulted in completely engaging the clutch, which once I got used to it was no big deal..). As I’m sure you can tell given the tone of this post, the day didn’t go very smoothly. MotorMilt & I took a wonderful ride up the coast and through the canyons. After breakfast in Agoura, we headed home via Kanan-Dune. I hit about 80 mph on the way down and all seemed wondrous once again. Except the morning’s good fortune hit a snag when we hit the intersection of Las Virgines and the Pacific Coast Highway.
I smelt something burning and turned towards MotorMilt at the stop light. He pointed towards the back of my bike and I noticed a very large white smoke plume coming out of the rear exhaust. This was easily fifty percent larger than the white smoke that came out of the rear end after Willow. I quickly pulled off the road at the Malibu Colony Shopping Center, only to discover that instead of a small puddle of oil, the Diva was leaking all over the place.
I’m sure this is true of a number of other folks, but I think I could have handled a new issue easier than the repeated failure of something that the bike was just in the shop for. Hopefully that makes sense. Thankfully Jake @ PI saved the day when he brow beat the Ducati Roadside Assistance folks, who at first weren’t going to tow the bike because this wasn’t a roadside issue but a service issue. Why this matters beat the shit out of me. The bike is unridable, it’s broken and it’s under warranty. Seems to me that they should tow it. But I don’t make the rules so go figure. Eventually thanks in no small part to Jake, the bike got towed back to PI… Of course now the real fun begins…
It’s a bit hard to see in the pict above, but the issues with the Diva no longer strikes me as an Italian quirk or characteristic. In the photo above - at least the original high rez one - you can pretty clearly see the oil on the rear tire. Few things in life scare me as much. From this point forward I now consider the engine issue with the bike a safety problem. So I’m not really sure how this will shake out, but I can honestly say that getting back on this particular bike scares the living shit out of me. As motorcyclists we constantly put our faith in so many variables that in all reality we can’t control at all even if we have the illusion that we can. Having a properly working machine is one of the few tenants of our universe that we can have some control over and unfortunately I no longer have the faith that this particular bike - for whatever reason - can and will work the way that it was designed. For instance can you imagine heading into a corner, 3/4’s of the way leaned over and thinking about the possibility of oil spilling out over the rear tire? Or worse having oil gushing out over the tire while you’re leaned over? Thankfully I was straight up when I noticed something was wrong and was able to safely get off the road without incident. But how many times can you split hairs? How many times can you go back to the same well and not get hurt? What happens next time when oil gushes out during normal riding conditions - i.e. no red lines, no extreme leans, nothing out of the ordinary - and god for bid I have a get off?
So the bottom line is that I’m not quite sure exactly what happens next, only to say that I have no doubt that the term ‘lemon’ is going to come up and that doesn’t really excite me very much…
