Rocker arm clip and the unsliding rocker

Man, the weather has been crap this spring.

Now that I know I've got some shims to change, we have more work to do. The plan was fairly simple; 1) pull the silly clips that keep the rocker arms in their place, 2) slide rocker arms over, 3) grab shims. Well I'll tell you right now, I've hit a snag at step 2. But before we get to that, let's cover step 1.

Pulling the rocker arm clip is a legendary struggle. If you check out the youtube video from ducatitech.com which goes over a 2 valver adjust, the clip should just pop off when you slide a pick under the raised hump of the clip. Well, Desmotre fate smites us down in this regard. The washers on either end of the clip cover the hump. No gap to slide a pick or thin screwdriver or even a hair into. So I spent 4 hours trying to figure this out. No amount of turning the clip or trying to use a modified spreader from the backside or trying to grab with pliers like instruments was of ANY use. While fumbling around in my attempt to pop this off, I found that wedging something under the clip and levering will 'raise the hump'.

Now we're talking. I grabbed a small pair of pliers with padded grips to use as my lever. I first used a dental pick like instrument to slide under the hump but it wasn't strong enough to do anything. It did bend nicely though. Time to fashion another special tool. Remember my tobacco pipe tool? Well, it has a long thin pick like tool. In pipe world, it's a reamer to clean out the pipe stem and inlet to the pipe bowl. Just so you all know, I had a short lived career as a tobacconist before I embarked on an engineering career. If you ever want to know about briar, meerschaum, tamping, care and feeding of tobacco, cigars and the like, I do that too. Anyway, back to Ducati tool world, if you bend about the last 1/2" of the reamer at 90 degrees in your bench vise, it makes the perfect rocker arm clip pry. Look right... pretty slick huh?


Below are the photos showing how I pried off the left intake rocker arm clip. Rotate the clip so the hump points toward the back of the bike. Slide your lever tool between the bottom of the clip and the front edge of the head and lever. The photo on the left shows the clip in "levered" position with the hump now standing proud so you can get a suitable pick under there. The photo on the right shows pick in place. Unfortunately, this is the worthless (for this task) dental pick, but you get the idea. Oh hey, ran across another trick. I slapped my magnetic pick up tool on the clip just before prying the clip off. This kept it from flying across the garage or down into the head or into my eye.




Well, now we can move on to sliding the rocker arm over so the shims are free to be R&R'd. ST lore says to rotate the motor just to the point where the intake valves start to open and the detent is right around there which will allow the arm to slide over. 2 days of trying and I still haven't found it. There's another way to do this... attack it like the 4-valve guys do. They have to pull the rocker arm pin and remove the rocker completely. I gotta think about this one. Not whether I should, but how. I threw this rocker arm slide over maneuver out to the ST2 Owner's Group last night and the responses I have at this time says to go that route. Next post or two, we'll go over what I plan to do.

Rest of this week is supposed to rain. Good thing I did that trackday on Sunday on Gab's stablemate. It was good to get some focused riding in since I've been unable to get any local recreational or commuting riding in. Maybe I'll tell you guys about that over the next few days.