My new red two-up touring bike

[Skub]

Safe travels Team Tricky.

[Supermofo]

In recent years I think I tend to run my chains slightly loose, confirmed when I checked yesterday. Manual says 2-3cm of play and I have 3.2. Doubt 2mm has made much odds though. Apparently if you are between 2.5-3 the chain just kisses the chain guard on the underside of the swingarm so that's a decent guide I'll aim for.

[Bigyin]

Hope you and Isabella have a good time and you talked the rain right up

P.S. the stone guard thing was removed first time i did the chain on mine and lives in a corner by the door to the bike shed. Doesnt seem to do much and in the words of the factory "looksa sheet"

[Couchy]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

[636mick]

That exhaust is massive!! The standard ones tiny in comparison!
Nice bikes, loved mine.
Mick

[matt]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

Deserves a thread of it's own , surely.

[KungFooBob]

His post is four days old, the Multi will be long gone by now.

[Couchy]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

Deserves a thread of it's own , surely.

Nah it's just a motorbike, it's loud and it wheelies that's it

[Mr Moofo]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

Here's a question
One of the things that would put me off a Multistrada as a touring bike is the fact that on my Diavel, finding neutral is a challenge. You can do it if you roll to a stop and slip it into neutral, or turn the engine of and go into neutral that way. But there is no chance in getting it whilst the bike is running and hot ( unless you like sapping between 1st and 2nd a million times)
Is the MS better?

[Couchy]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

Here's a question
One of the things that would put me off a Multistrada as a touring bike is the fact that on my Diavel, finding neutral is a challenge. You can do it if you roll to a stop and slip it into neutral, or turn the engine of and go into neutral that way. But there is no chance in getting it whilst the bike is running and hot ( unless you like sapping between 1st and 2nd a million times)
Is the MS better?

Seems fine to me

[Bigyin]

Here's a question
One of the things that would put me off a Multistrada as a touring bike is the fact that on my Diavel, finding neutral is a challenge. You can do it if you roll to a stop and slip it into neutral, or turn the engine of and go into neutral that way. But there is no chance in getting it whilst the bike is running and hot ( unless you like sapping between 1st and 2nd a million times)
Is the MS better?

Never had an issue like that on either of my Multis .... combined 65000 ish miles riding and never had a problem finding neutral

[Mr Moofo]

Here's a question
One of the things that would put me off a Multistrada as a touring bike is the fact that on my Diavel, finding neutral is a challenge. You can do it if you roll to a stop and slip it into neutral, or turn the engine of and go into neutral that way. But there is no chance in getting it whilst the bike is running and hot ( unless you like sapping between 1st and 2nd a million times)
Is the MS better?

Never had an issue like that on either of my Multis .... combined 65000 ish miles riding and never had a problem finding neutral

Pehaps it is 2011 Diavel 1200 character.
It's a complete arse when you are tired at the end of the day

[Tricky]

I knew someone else had one of these just couldn’t remember who, picked this 2014 up at the weekend. Full termi and only 6k miles. Just had a big service too. My review is shorter, it wheelies loads and is way too loud. Luckily I’ve got standard exhaust to go on

Have just realised that I haven’t been in this thread for a few weeks- nice one @Couchy albeit I’m guessing it may not still be with you- is it? And if it is, have you ridden it or unbolted/bolted on anything yet?

Anyway, as for mine, the Paris trip was great
As sod's law, and every trip on the bike seems to dictate, although the weather was great when we left home on Thursday morning, within 10 minutes or so of hitting the M25, it started raining....
We just carried on for 15 minutes or so in the hope that it was just a shower, but it wasn’t letting up so we dived off a junction around Reigate and put the waterproofs on, and I am glad we did as it just got harder and harder and was absolutely pissing down by the time we hit Folkestone.

We made good time though, so we managed to grab a coffee in the terminal building and get on an earlier crossing than planned.

Last time we used the tunnel on the bike we shared a carriage with some Wild Hogs, and this time it was the turn of a GS chapter- not sure what it is about going away on this bike, but we seem to end up with groups of people all on (pretty much) the same bike, rather than a mixture.



Anyway, one of them aside, who Isabella thought a complete dickhead ( for many reasons, probably too many to list here but his love of his 360 degree camera on a stick was definitely one of the reasons ), they seemed a more friendly lot than the Harley gang we had on the last crossing.
We got to Calais, and it was raining there, albeit not hard, so the boil-in-the-bag gear stayed on, and we trundled off towards Paris.
It was early afternoon when we got off the train, and we wanted to make the most of our 3 nights in Paris so we just used the A26/A1 autoroute for most of the trip down- not an exciting route, but efficient, and within an hour or so the sun was blazing so the wet weather gear went back into it's Sainsburys bag



We hit the Peripherique at approx 17:30 and a trip around there on my old ZZR1400 with a couple of mates in rush hour all came flooding back to me- the filtering “races” with all the other bikes and scooters is mad, albeit great fun, I was giggling in my helmet at times, intense is the word that best describes it I think
And the Multi is brilliant for it, even two-up with paniers- it carries its weight well and just seems well balanced whether you are flicking between cars at speed or walking pace
I reckon it would have been a very different story for most of our GS-riding Eurotunnel acquaintances with the size of their panniers, but the handlebars/mirrors are the widest things on our bike I just used that as a gauge, never hit anything or had any near misses
We’d decided that before going to our hotel we would ride down to the Arc de Triomphe and the tower for a piccie or two with the bike, and wow- I’m sure Paris traffic has got worse since I was last there- total gridlock for a lot of it, we used pavements and the tiniest gaps that we could (as all the other 2-wheelers seemed to be) and it was still hard getting through it all at times, I wouldn’t have wanted to venture in there in a car, reckon we could have still been there now



So, obligatory tourist pics were taken, and we headed for our hotel- the weather had brightened up considerably within an hour or so south of Calais, so we’d dumped the wet weather gear, and I am so glad we had as even just in my denim jeans, I was sweating for England- it was now 25 degrees ambient, and my bollocks and thighs were on fire due to the heat of the bike from all the slow running and fan being on constantly, pushing the hot air back at me.


I’d booked a hotel in the Lamark district in the 18th arrondissement, close to Montmartre and it proved to be a top choice- lovely and immaculately clean little hotel, with secure private underground parking for the bike in what turned out to be a fabulous area.



It was a complete stroke of luck rather than a deliberate choice as I don’t really know Paris, but where we were had some really lovely little laid back bars and restaurants, and was only 20 mins or so on the Metro to the centre and all the usual tourist hotspots.

We spent the next three days doing some of the usual Paris tourist things, seeing a fair few of the preparations they're making for the Olympics and mainly just having a really lovely chilled few days- the Paris weather was perfect- shorts and flip-flops and sun cream was needed, and the bike didn’t move until we headed home Sunday lunchtime.

The ride home was uneventful, it did of course rain (again ) en route, but was only a 30-minute or so heavy shower, so although the wet weather gear came out again, we took it off when we were in the tunnel and the rest of the ride how was in brilliant sunshine.

All-in-all a great trip, we had a really nice relaxed time , and without a doubt it's my favourite visit to Paris so far.



( Am suffering with Pollen / Hayfever in the above pic, beer definitely helped though )








As for the bike, well, it didn’t miss a beat and I’ve said it all before I think, but it’s perfect for us;- Isabella loves it in terms of comfort ( and looks and sound ), and from my perspective, it carries its weight very well when fully loaded and is still great fun to ride- highly recommended if you want a very comfy and capable two-up tourer that you can still ride like a big-handlebarred sportsbike if you choose

We’ve unexpectedly got a free weekend and a dog-sitter this weekend , and it looks like the weather down south will be nice so we have decided to take another little trip down to the south coast for a night or two, and assuming the weather forecast doesn’t change, we’ll be using the bike- her choice!

Oh, and @Mr Moofo - as with Yin, finding neutral is a non-issue on mine- silky smooth and never a bother whether moving or standing still

[Tricky]

Blimey, it’s been well over a year since I’ve posted in this thread, time flies eh, but, that’s because there hasn’t really been much to report on it, until now, so time for an update

As you’ll likely already realise if you’ve read any of the foregoing, Isabella and I call the Multi HER bike- not because she bought it or rides it (or is ever likely to), as she didn’t, and she doesn’t, but 90% of the miles I have done on it have been with Isabella on the back. Great as it is, and love it as I do every single time I jump on it, I have other road bikes too and so it hasn’t really had a lot of use outside of our one(ish) a year trips away, and the occasional bimble out together on a sunny Sunday afternoon, or just me running on it an errand/ doing a little bit of shopping where a topbox( shudder - although useful at times, they are still hideous and wreck the looks of any bike) comes in useful.

Our little trips away on it have to date been to celebrate Isabella’s birthday in May – it’s her rather than my idea, but I love it that she wants to go on the bike, and we always have fun. She gets to choose where we go, and this year’s choice was Southern Spain.
And because of that, and specifically the distance that Spain is from Buckinghamshire and the amount of time we have, we decided to fly out and rent a bike locally, as we did for our little Italy tour a couple of years back, when I rented a V4 MultiStrada.

This time I went German and opted for a 1250GS, simply because, although I’ve ridden plenty of Airhead BMs over the years, the only Oilhead I can remember riding was IanB’s R1100(I think, or maybe 1200?) RS, or maybe CS, at Pembrey, yonks ago, and although I’m not a fan of the GS image or this specific style of bike, they get raved about by so many people, and when touring, they are just so common, I thought that I’d give it a go, and develop my own opinion of one.
So that’s what we did, but there are of course, options - primarily GS or GSA , and 1250 or 1300.
After reading a few reviews, I decided on the 1250, and we had a very enjoyable week pootling around a little bit of Southern Spain on a 1250GS Black Edition, which I think is one of the most well-specced, and certainly nicest looking variants- this one



I had planned to do a sort of road-test- mini-tour thread on it, but well, I never did, so maybe I’ll dig out a few more pics and write a few lines at the end of this update on the red bike, we’ll see.
Anyway, I digress- that's not what this thread is primarily about, and this is an update on the Multistrada.

So, back to it- As some of you on here will know, Isabella and I tied the knot and married on Sept 6th last year, and when we were discussing the subject of what we wanted to do on our first anniversary ( steady… ), her response was instant- she wanted to go back to Bruges on the bike. It had been our first mainland Europe biking trip together 4 years ago, we had a great weekend there, and it’s a great place to go IMO to if you’re only planning on spending one or two nights away, and very easy to get to - sorted!

So that’s where we were last weekend, but before we went, the old girl ( the Multistrada, that is ) needed a full service- although it’s done less than 5k miles in our ownership, I bought it over 5 years so although I still am a bit hmmmm about the required frequency of belt change recommendation on desmo Ducatis, every 5 years is what the book says, so it needed doing again, along with oil and filters etc.
So I ordered a pair of genuine Ducati belts and the few other service bits needed, and started to have a little read of the manual, as although I’ve changed countless car cambelts in my time, I’m a Ducati virgin in this respect.

First thing that I noticed when the belts arrived (apart from the extortionate price compared to your average run-of-the-mill car ), was that they are made in the UK!



As I know at least a few of you on here will know from experience, changing the belts is very simple and straightforward, but, I guess perhaps daunting to some due to the consequences if you get it wrong.
The key things to concentrate on are (of course) ensuring that you get the cam timing and tension of the new belts right, but before we get to that point, on a Multi, to get to the rear spark plug and rear belt cover you need to remove pretty much all the body work and tank, and what a fecking faff that is

Although it’s only effectively half-faired, that is made up of a large amount of panels, and an even larger amount of screws and bolts- all these!



Without doubt, it will get easier after you’ve done it once or twice, but removing everything I needed to for access and putting it all back together afterwards was, I reckon, at least 80% of the time it took me to complete the whole job, and I imagine also the reason that belt changes / desmo services on these are so expensive.

Anyway, once all the panels and belt covers were removed, I removed the plugs and rotated the motor to TDC on the compression stroke on the horizontal cylinder - there is a mark on the crank pulley and a (very small ) indent on the case- it’s not at TDC in this pic but the mark is inside the blue squiggle.



As there are none of the usual valve springs in this, and almost all other V-twin Ducatis, the cams are easy to rotate with the belts off and it’s not essential to lock them in place before removing the old belts, but I did invest in a cheap 3D printed device to lock the position of the inlet cam on the vertical cylinder, as that’s the only one that springs back a few degrees when the belt is removed.



Once I had it all lined up, as an extra little “ make sure I get the cam timing right” check, I marked up the outer edge of the old belts and cam and crank sprockets with a paint pen before releasing the tensioners and removing the belts.
As far as I could see, the belts looked absolutely fine, with no real visible signs of wear or degradation, which makes me question Ducati’s change interval, but well, £130 for a pair of belts is a lot less than a complete replacement motor eh!



And when the belts were off, I marked up the new belts exactly as the old ones, like so.



I then put the new ones on, of course taking care to make sure that all my paint marks lined up everywhere, and fitted the tensioners, making sure that they were the correct way up- it is possible to put them on the other way up, which still allows you to tension the belts fine, but I’m guessing isn’t a good idea as the action of the belt pushing on the tensioner when its running would be acting anti-clockwise on it, i.e. trying to loosen the locknut rather than tighten it.
After turning it over for a few revolutions, I then set about accurately tensioning the belts, which is, I think, the area that scares lots of people, and having done it now, I can understand why, to some extent at least.
It’s because you tension it to twang at a particular frequency, rather than to have a specific mm of deflection possible. There is an official Ducati tool / dB meter for the purpose, but I just downloaded the Gates Carbon Belt App onto my phone and used that.
Now I what I found was that the frequency reported, was greatly dependant upon how I twanged it, and it took a fair bit of practice ( and a sore finger) to get the reading consistently repeatable- whether it would be any different with the official Ducati dB meter, I can’t say, but I seriously doubt it, as the variable is definitely the twanger, as it were

Anyway, we got to a point that I was happy with (spec is 110Db +/– 5 or so), which is approx 5-10mm deflection possible, and based on my previous experiences with car cambelts, it felt OK to me, so I left it at that



I then had a good look at the plugs- I hadn’t bought new ones as the bike has still done under 12k miles from new and was running fine, plugs looked fine to me so they went back in.




Before putting the belt covers back on, I then popped the tank back on and ran it up to temperature and re-checked belt tension, before changing the oil and filter, and this time also removing the screen in the sump to check and clean it.
One thing that’s slightly annoying on these is that to change the filter, you have to remove the belly pan, for which you have to remove the centre-stand first. Not the end of the world, especially if you have a rear-wheel paddock stand, and it all comes off and goes back nice and easily.



Oh, and whenever I’ve changed the oil filter on this bike it always makes me smile a bit, as neither of my ½” filter sockets fit it, so I use a strap wrench- not just any old strap wrench, but this one, that Fin, my youngest boy made as part of his basic mechanical apprenticeship training at Lyneham when he was in the Army [proud Dad]




Evrything was all good, with no visible debris on the sump plug or screen, so I nailed it back together with a new sump washer and filled it up with Shell fully synth, secured the tank, and over a period of a further couple of hours, got all the fairing etc back together.
I then took it out for a road test to check all was good and there were no leaks, which of course there weren’t, and we were all set for our next little adventure across the channel

And it was a fabulous little trip- weather was absoloutely perfect throughout, we had just the smoothest run around the M25 and down the M20 that I can ever remember with not a single hold-up, and the Eurotunnel and passport control etc was nice and quiet with no queues at all- the complete opposite of 3 or 4 weeks ago when we went down to Chamonix for a week in the car.

Our hotel (The Rosenburg ) was perfect, with a garage to stick the bike in, and Bruges itself is great- we don’t usually go to the same places more than once as there is so much of the world to explore, and the roads to get here aren’t the most exciting, but that’s not really what this trip was about, and it was perfect for a couple of nights away IMO













The journey home (again, in perfect weather) was equally painless, at least until we hit the M25 which was jam after jam, so lots and lots of filtering, which kept it interesting- I did have the 360 camera on the bike for the trip, so when I get around to downloading / editing, I might put some of it up here, if it’s worth looking at.

And the bike was faultless, was by far the coolest looking bike in the tunnel both ways (unless you think GS/GSAs and Versys look cool that is ), I love it at least as much as I did before the trip (which is quite a lot), and probably even more- the only thing I think I might change before our next trip away, is to get the seats re-trimmed with gel pads, as riding the GS a few months ago made me realise they definitely could be better.

Oh, and yes, that GS we rented in Spain back in May- what was my verdict?

I am glad I chose it, and can see why people like them so much. It had a very comfortable seat and riding position (albeit lower footrests than I would have preferred) and a lovely engine, sounds great, and is much smoother, especially down low, than the Multi.
It ran out of breath a little bit up top, but still good, and plenty fast enough for this sort of bike.
It had a (really good) up and down QS, ESA, cruise control, heated grips and seats ( not that we needed them as it was 25-30 degrees for the whole trip), basically all the bells and whistles you could want pretty much, all in all a very competent overall package and a good choice for a two-up tour

The main things that I didn’t like were the weight, though, and (lack of) front-end feel. The suspension was OK, at least in Dynamic Pro mode, but it was still a bit softer than I would have liked whatever setting I tried, and although it was awesome on the long straight bits and still fun up and down the passes in the Sierra Nevada ( we started in Malaga, did a 1,000 km loop up to Seville, across to Granada, up and down a fair bit then back down and along the coast), given a choice, I’d have much preferred to be on the Multi, it’s just that bit livelier, lighter feeling, and put simply, more fun.
And of course, for the tarts amongst us, it is way (way way way ) cooler, even with a top box on

Anyway, that was a fab trip too, and we’ll definitely be doing more of Spain in the future, I think- some pics below, for anyone interested

[weeksy]

Top top write up

[Taipan]

Great write, as usual, and a happy anniversary to you both!

[Tricky]

Top top write up

Great write, as usual, and a happy anniversary to you both!

Thanks boys

[Skub]

A fine read Tricky. Belated happies to ya both.

[Supermofo]

You took a while to post it, but worth the wait for content! Happy Anniversary

[Tricky]

Here's a cheesy little 3 minute trip summary video - if you manage to ignore the thrown-together editing and make it that far, there's a little Brucey-bonus about halfway through that clearly demonstrates some of the value of having a 360 degree camera
(they were Italian, in case anyone is interested )