Ouch. Well I guess I just got told, big time.
Bob, the rear temperature sensor has already been replaced... they both have. Anyway if you have a temperature specification chart, believe me, I am very interested... I simply couldn't find anything online beyond a resistance at room temperature and of course Ducati are unlikely to hand out diagnostic information for free.
As to your criticisms, well... yeah. Fair enough. Point by point...
Loads of my writing is wild conjecture. If I'm doing that, I try to say so, that I'm guessing, that I'm not certain. I go there because I'm interested. Almost all of the time, what I find out is that existing practice is like it is for very good reasons... but until I go through those reasons, I don't know them.
This is a hobby. I'm not in the trade (thank fuck) and I'm free to be as eccentric an amateur as I want to be. I don't have to operate under the brutal paradigm of get it fixed right now for the lowest price possible, and you're right, if I did I'd pick up some common sense in one hell of a hurry.
Asking for help: Yep. The usual story with these forums is: want to ride, bike's down, need help. Again, fair enough, that's the usual format. I'm interested in, why is the bike down? What's gone wrong? Do we need to change the bike, so this doesn't happen again? It's just a different point of view.
Viscosity of petrol: quite frankly I would be amazed if petrol had a truly constant viscosity with temperature. The same for density, it'll expand and contract like an oil does. The question is, would this be enough of an effect to be significant over the operating temperature range of fuel in lines or fuel in a tank? Probably not (your direct experience is being listened to btw) but (BUT) I know that the problem I am chasing gets worse if the bike warms up. It didn't used to do this. The fuel lines haven't been shifted in location between running OK and having the issue. So yes, you are right, this is off-the-mark conjecture, I'm chasing a ghost and hot fuel lines might be an issue to a perfectionist but almost certainly aren't the issue here. Since we're on the topic, have a look at this paper: https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/nb...cpaperT125.pdf it's seriously vintage but it's still about gasoline.
Changing out the fuel pressure regulator: it's 20 years old, I know that it's not making 3 bar any more, it's given good service but we're now well past the expected lifetime of the bike. Is it really a surprise that it might be on the way out? And wasn't the entire post based around the fact that I took a diagnostic measurement, tried to understand what it meant, and made a decision based on that, instead of a guess and shoot game where I replaced parts until the problem went away?
Finally... yeah I really can't argue with you concerning 'misguided adventures', quite honestly that is true. I really need to get myself out of this situation of old bikes constantly breaking down and three to six months of trying to work out what has gone wrong this time.
Bookmarks