Yay! More specialty tools for your Ducati!
Fortunately this one isn't too hard to make for yourself. So what's more valuable? Your time or your money?
A tool can be bought from somewhere like Corsair and will look something like this and will run you around $80:
But a tutorial isn't much good if all it tells you is to go buy the stuff pre-made so let's make our own. Hopefully you'll be able to get by with just nut adapter. I was able to. You'll need a starting point. I chose to use a large nut (1 3/16") that came off the axle of a Scirrocco.
Many people use sockets. I think 15/16th is the right size for the socket. That comes out to something like a 25mm socket. Either way, the steps are mostly the same.
Time taken is anywhere from 1-4 hours depending on how much of a perfectionist you are and whether or not you use a cut off tool to speed things up. For me, I got the beginning sizing done in about 30 minutes with a dremel. Then I started hacking away with my dremel for about an hour, watched a movie to let my dremel cool down, and then hacked away with the dremel for another hour and the rest was filing. Those 2 hours of dremeling could be done in 10 minutes with a cut off tool.
Tools you'll need are at least a file and a dremel. A cut off tool can save you a lot of time shaving away the areas between the teeth but they scare me so I did the whole job with a dremel and finished it up with a file. Don't forget eye protection! If you're anything like me you'll be getting sparks in the face trying to see where you're cutting and getting as close as possible to cut down on filing so I always opt for a full face shield.
mmmm, Elle MacPherson.
You'll also need a starting piece to cut- either a large nut or a sacrificial socket. Keep in mind that if you use a nut, you need to be able to fit a socket on it so the nut needs to be deep enough that you can still get a socket on it (the pulley nut is recessed into the pulley a little bit so the pulley could get in the way of a socket on a big nut like the one I used). It's also nice if you have something durable because the torque setting for the nut (cam not drive) is 70-75Nm ~ 52ftlbs... + corrosion = really damn tight.
I mangled my adapter nut a little bit trying to use a breaker bar and having the adapter slip off the pulley nut.
Then I had to whack it with an electric impact gun + penetrating oil. Even then I had to gun it for a little while.
First, mark out the tabs that need to be saved. Just place your new pulley nut over your "stock" and mark the areas to keep with a sharpie.
Next you'll start shaving off some of the space between the tabs. You want to start closing in on the placement of the tabs at this point. It doesn't have to be exact but you'll want it close to save yourself some work later. In my case I needed to shave a bit off the insides of the tabs too.
Sadly, no pics for this part since my hands were pretty grubby now now and I didn't want to get my camera dirty.
Now that you've got your tabs mostly set it's time to cut out the empty space between the tabs. This can go really quickly if you have a cut off tool. As I stated before, they scare me so I didn't use one. I used my dremel and started by making a deep cut all the way down to my needed depth about 1mm away from my starter tabs and then shaving away everything in between the tabs. This gives a comfortable "oops" space.
After you've cleared the spaces between the tabs you can use your dremel to tidy up the the extra material next to your tabs and save yourself some filing.
Then it's on to filing! Take it slow and remember to rotate the nut you're trying to match every once in a while. Nothing is exactly symmetrical so you might find that you can't get your adapter to fit the nut unless your rotate it 90 degrees or something. You want a SNUG fit! not so snug that you have to jam the nut into the adapter and can't get it out but a snug fit. And it's OK if it the adapter only fits the nut 1 way and doesn't work if you rotate it 90, 180, 270 degrees. As long as it still fits on one of the nuts on the bike it will deform slightly and become a perfect fit after you use it once.
As you can see in my picture, it only fits half way on in 3 out of the 4 ways the nut can sit on the adaptor. But after I used it once it deformed enough that it fits perfectly no matter which way rotate it now.
Also note that my choice to use a giant nut
blocks the 4 holes on the pulley that a lot of people use to keep the pulley from rotating! This can make installation a little annoying because now you have to figure out how to hold the pulley still (I put the bike in 6 with old belts on and held the brake while torquing even though I was told that this is bad.
). Using a socket will likely give you more space to use the4 holes to hold the pulley still but you'll need to figure out how to make that tool yourself or use something like the corsair tool.
See the 4 holes in the pulley? Yeah, my adapter nut blocks those... Once I put a socket on the nut adapter it's as big as the inner diameter of that pulley.
All done now!
Happy wrenching!
