Sookie turns one – the first service interval

Ifeel like a proud parent. We have reached our first landmark birthday together, she’s turning one. Awe.

But seriously that went so quick. I’ve been making an effort to get out as much as I could while off from work and this has produced two good rides, one out to Mt Macedon for a quick spurt out on some back roads and then back over the mountains and home again, and one mild freeway treck from my place out on to the Black Spur. A magic day that was and I thought I had caught it on the Contour but the friggen SD card I was using was incompatible so no video sorry chumps.

The rest of the rides has all been local and commuting which is probably the most fun I have ever had commuting. I seriously still get the jitters and go all girly when I get on her. She still produces the gooesbumps and makes me go faaark every time I roll on the beans. It’s been a a completely magic bike so far.

So the first service is a minor one and then nothing until 12,000kms which I’m pretty happy about, Ducati seems to have really worked on this in the modern bikes bringing the reliability up there with Japanese and the costs of those big services aren’t out of the ordinary by comparison either.

I’m looking at a little over $300 or so for the 1k service and up around the $800-900 mark for the major at 12k which I reckon I will hit easily by the end of the year and I think that is pretty reasonable for being able to ride the bike of my boyhood fantasy.

And all the bits get installed. I was at Ducati City yesterday speaking to Sean about greasing the chain and making sure I could adjust it while we’re out on ADR and he informed me that I lose my tail piece by installing the luggage rack which sucks a fair bit because strangely enough I really like that little tail pice.

But I need the rack, so I guess it might be going on for the tour then coming back off again, we’ll have to see about that. The real annoying part is that it is apparently a bitch to install and you need to unplug brake lights and wiring and crap which means I am not touching it so every uninstall reinstall is labour dollars, and moths are currently flapping around in my wallet which doesn’t help.

I now know that I need a torque wrench to tighten the chain should need arise, which is good information. Sean reckons that the chain shouldn’t really need it after the first service anyway and that it will settle in by then so we’ll see, so far so good. He also said you can lean the Hyper over on its stand to lube the chain if you don’t have access to a stand which I thought was interesting because the kick stand is mounted straight onto the engine block and it looked like something I wouldn’t do without knowing it was safe to do. More good info from those gusy, bless em.

And finally, I can’t wait wait to get the mirrors installed. While I have adapted to the flip out rear visions mirrors and I appreciate the design aesthetic of the really clear bars I just can’t do it for the daily ride. I am always flipping them in to get in the garage  (or split traffic strictly at the lights only of course), then folding them back out, and the constant distraction and hands off grips action is dangerous and annoying. At least from a design perspective Ducati realised this and provide good looking standard stork mirrors with the indicators built in, same goes with the bark busters, so I’m hoping that won’t detract too much from her stunning good looks and aggressive stance. I have seen them installed on an 1100 S and thought it was still cool so here’s hoping.