So having just picked my bike up and ridden 5 miles through heavy traffic on the West Side highway in NYC, my temperature gauge was indicating that it was bloody hot. Being that I was wearing full leather, that was something I was well aware of but thought I'd better go find somewhere to park for a while. As I got off at the 79th street exit, the bike stalled. I didn't think too much of it because I've stalled this bike a lot since I got it, combination of it being crap off idle and me being crap off idle too.
Pushed the bike through the intersection after trying in vain to get it to start and parked.
Trying to start the bike resulted in a clicking noise that didn't sound healthy or happy. I thought maybe it was hot and throwing a tantrum but alas, that wasn't the case as getting a drink and coming back in 20 revealed. I called the store, they came and got me. We couldn't do a whole lot about it as it was 8pm and the techs had gone home so it would have to wait until the following day.
The tech worked out (with some help from Ducati) that a hex head bolt was the culprit. A 5c hex head bolt killed my EVO. The problem with EVO was that the were wires being pushed quite hard against the hex head bolt (HHB) by a plastic cover. The HHB had pretty pointy edges. What happened was that when the bike heated up, the HHB melted through the insulation around some wiring which was then arcing (the HHB has clear signs of arcing). This meant that the bike wouldn't start.
The tech at my store replaced the bolt with the same one that's on the 696 & 796 (<- no problem with those bikes, they use a button head bolt) and viola (did you see what I did right there?) bike was good to go. This was a manufacturing/design fault with the EVO. Ducati has since released a service bulletin covering the replacement of this bolt and my store has already fixed the other EVOs they had in.
This was a couple of weeks ago, I've since put ~400 miles on the bike without any problem, well, except that I keep stalling the damn thing.
