What manual to buy? 06 620

[cobrajet]

Been building car engines for 40 years, worked as a motorcycle mechanic in college, mechanical engineer by profession and need to do the 6000 mile stuff on my 620 commuter. What manual or CD would you recommend for reference? Definite do-it-your-selfer so no dealer interface desired (closest one about 100miles away IIRC).  thanks

[scott_araujo]

The DesmoTimes manual is excellent and very reasonably priced.  It also details some common mods and aftermarket goodies.  There are some things not completely detailed.  The factory manual has everything for teh stock bike but is pretty pricey.  I found one on the net for free for a bike with the same engine, I use that to fill in any gaps.  The Haynes manual is also good with lots of pictures but lacks specifics for certain bikes.

Also, if you are running the stock ECU you'll want to get something like VDSTS from TechnoResearch to tune the engine.  You can get lots of data from the engine but there's not much you can actively do: clear trouble codes, TPS reset, idle mixture set.  These things are pretty minor but impossible otherwise and an absolute necessity if you don't want to go to the dealer.  At $200 it's pricey but you recover that cost on your first service.

Scott

[Langanobob]

What Scott said, plus about the manual I got a reprint factory M620 manual from ebay for cheap.  You can download it for free, but I like printed pages when working on something and it was cheaper to buy it from ebay than to print it out myself.  Don't have the web or ebay links but I'm sure they're easy to find with a search.

Also, welcome to the forum, hope you stay around.

[ScottRNelson]

Yet another Ducati owner named Scott says to get the DesmoTimes manual.  I have both of them, the 2-valve manual and the 4-valve manual.  One big advantage to buying those manuals is that if you run into any problems, you can go to the forum accessible from the web site and ask the author, JT Snyder, quiestions and he'll normally answer them within a day.  And anything that needs better explanations gets updated in the next version of the manual.

[scott_araujo]

+1.  LT is super responsive on his site and sells parts to boot.

Scott

[cobrajet]

Thanks for all your responses! As a side note my first road legal bike was a 250 Ducati, probably was riding that in 72'.  bill