Hello all its been a few weeks in the making but I've finally got my Urban Enduro in Thailand.
I've been religiously going over this forum reading all of the threads and sucking in all the information I could about the bike and what to expect before receiving mine.
So I'm gonna run you guys and girls thru my experience yesterday at my local dealer.
It all started early yesterday morning and the first thing I did before heading to the dealer was I went down to my local Shell gas station and purchased 8 litres of Shell Advance 4T AX5 mineral oil. You maybe thinking ok so whats going on here. This was the start of the Motoman break in. So I've turned up at the dealer with my new oil and the first thing I said to the salesman was can you get the mechanic to drop the oil on the bike for me....well being Thailand it was as if the record playing over speaker system just suddenly scratched to a stop! Luckily for me my salesman used to work for Kawasaki and knows me from my days with a kwacka and to be honest he didn't expect anything else from me as I'm the expat from **** (mechanic by trade in a past life). So to be fair when we talked to the mechanic and told him I want to get the fully synthetic out from the bike straight away he actually understood what I was doing. The only problem was they were too busy to do it but with a bit of persuasion and the old adage of the kings head he finally gave in and said he can do it. Another bombshell I hit him with was that I would be coming back after 50kms and dropping the oil and filter again lol.
So after winning over the mechanic we sat down to do the purchase of the bike. This all went relatively smoothly with my main man however this is where all the information I'd picked up on here started to come in to effect.
First off was the handover package. I was expecting this nice Brown luxury wallet that has been flashed around on this forum now and again but to my surprise this isn't the case in Thailand and even after a discussion in broken Thai and English apparently there's no such thing here in Thailand. The handover package is actually a 10 litre dry bag with scrambler emblazoned on it the service and owners manual and a free Ducati scrambler t shirt (which is pretty cool as its the vintage model) however it's too small so I will need to change it. So that's it, no plush wallet. That being said its a quite a hip package which probably fits in to the young theme of the Ducati I suppose. Picture attached.
So that was the first sort of glitch maybe. Then I asked him for a 275 thai baht (£5.50) keyring to go with the bare Ducati key which I had to pay for after spending £8,500. Oh well as they say Amazing Thailand!!
So really my experience with the first stage of being a Ducati owner for the first time was quite good. It wasn't as painful as I was expecting and that is nothing to do with Ducati but if anyone has spent any time in Thailand would understand its sometimes not easy to do business here and especially with Ducati being a young brand here in Thailand I think Ducatis reputation is in good hands (Day 1 bear in mind lol)
So now for the bike itself, I'm absolutely buzzing with it, what a machine!! Might get a few raised eyebrows on here but because I'm doing the motoman break in she was opened up straight away and she definitely gets there let me tell you. However those of you who are doing it by the book may not realize it is actually limited to about 9000 rpms which I found out when I hit it a few times lol. This is apparently removed with a upgrade at the first service. So she will go all the way then. I actually went back for my 50km oil change and asked him could he take it off now.>
Anyway the bike is so easy to ride, I love it and I knew I would even tho I didn't test drive one before I bought it. Big Ducati fan now.
Well that's the positive things I have to say until the stuff I've learned on this forum reared its head again. So I'm still out on my first ride and with my second oil change done I'm in full flow up and down the gears hitting it hard when it's safe to do so. I decided to go home for a half an hour as that's all I could manage as I wanted to keep riding. After putting on some 50 factor sunblock (36degrees here and that's without the heat of the bike) I've wheeled her out of the garage again and got kitted up to go again and so it's time to start the bike and NOTHING!!! so I thought here we go. Is it immobilizer issues reported on here in the past? Well after messing about for a few minutes pulling clutches and brakes in swithching every button and turning every knob. I'm at a loss. So I've phoned a friend who has a monster and asked him how to start it as it was started for me at the dealer. My friend just started laughing and said press the starter!! Mates eh!! Anyway guess what guys.....FALSE NEUTRAL!!! yep got one !! On my first stop start. Really hard to get into neutral and when I did it was false so the bike wouldn't start and obviously not thinking it wasn't in neutral I didn't check to see if the N was there.
Then once I was on my way I'm not sure if it was because I was pressing all of the buttons and switches I noticed my full beam was on and to be honest I didn't know how to get it off as its got a sequence to operate it according to the manual I read after my ride. So I'm not sure whether it was the full beam stuck on issue I've read on here or it was rider error. I will monitor it in the future.
Apart from those issues I had I think it's great. The issues for me mean nothing and can be dealt with I'm sure when everything is bedded in hitting neutral will get easier.
The next thing for me to do today is to take of the dreaded EVAP Canister...yes it's on there!!
Thailand have it on a few models that are made here but not on others.
Oh there is another topic I want to address and that is , Are we sure the Spoked rims are tubed??? It says nothing in the owners manual about tubed tyres and no difference in the tyre pressures between different models. I need to get some closure on this as I've bought a tubed repair kit I'm going to attach to the bike and would hate to get a flat and only have patches and not plugs lol.
Well I'm going to sign of with a few pics to liven it up a bit and I'm sorry for the epic review its been hard on me too as I'm using a phone for this and my fingers are killing me.
Thank you for bearing with me. I'll post again if I've missed anything and the sun is shinning here in the land of smiles so I'm going riding!!
