The cylinder heads – Vertical head

While the investigation about the non fitting generator cover goes on, I started to disassemble the cylinder heads. They don’t look nice at all with loose paint and lots of oxides, and the plan is to have them glass bead blasted, but before I can send them away for blasting I need to strip them down totally and mask all surfaces that I want to keep.

I started off working with the vertical head, but before I took anything apart I measured the valve clearances. I know that the former owner of the bike was happy on the revs, so I was al little curious. All measures where out of spec. but I found nothing unusual.

The camshaft was marked OHT. I don’t know what that means. Perhaps someone reading this can help me? Send an E-mail or add a comment!



To extract the rocker pins I needed some tool. Basically I copied the Ducati tool nr 887130120. To remove the closer rocker you need a tool to hold the spring in position. Again I copied the Ducati tool (nr 887130143), but added no handle.



All rocker pins but one came out real easy. The last one needed some convincing by the heat gun. All rockers seemed OK except one closer rocker that had a bad wound in the chrome layer! Failing rockers is a known problem on Ducati 4V engines, but I have never heard of a rocker failure on a 2V. My guess is that the clearance on this rocker was set to tight and the rocker has suffered from that. Of course I examined the camshaft for damage but it seemed OK. Just to be sure I will bring it to the shop when buying a new rocker to get a second opinion.