Customer Reviews
Hello Evotech,
I purchased front and rear wheel protectors set. The design, choice of materials, surface finish, all fit perfectly to the motorbike as per usual Evotech standard (which I am really glad for and cheer for you wherever I go).
I installed them as they come from the package. But the rear one damaged by motorbike quite a bit after about 700km of riding with it, please read below.
The rear wheel spindle bobbins' tightening nuts got tightened during riding even harder, then I initially tightened it during the installation process. This resulted in squeezing rear wheel axis bolt/rear wheel bearing, and damaging it beyond its normal function. When the wheel bearing got damaged beyond its limits, it manifested in about 160+kph as a "floating rear", feeling like the rear is sliding about 2 centimetres in each direction side to side. It was quite bad, and I consider myself lucky I did not crash. At this point I am not exaggerating. If this happened on a track or in a quick corner, it would have been a crash without a doubt (not a fun one either).
Ducati did repair it for me, and they mentioned these bikes have somewhat different design of the rear wheel bearing, and it doesn not like to be squeezed by anything.
Take this into consideration, maybe even putting it into a description of the whole bobbins kit and single rear wheel bobbin, just so your future customers are at least aware of this. This is not directly an issue of you product, as it is an issue of Ducati's design.
The only advice I got from Ducati is "do not tighten it very hard next time, just lightly". Maybe adding a little bit of glue to the packaging might be a good "mitigation", applying it to the nut would solve any dread of it coming undone in 200+kmh.
I realized, that during this past 700kms, the bike had lower top speed, did have lower torque, stronger "engine braking" effect, chain got quite stretched because it had to work harder, higher fuel consumption by about 10-15%, and during my rides the rear swingarm was getting quite hot. I could feel the generated warmth through my trousers, and it most certainly was not the exhaust. After that it started "slinding" as desribed above.
Those were just two rides out, so my brain did not connect these issues before it caused the damage mentioned above.
Otherwise, I already owned and installed your spindle bobbins kits on 4 bikes altogether (3 in the past 15 years). But the issue had occurred only on this one due to the mechanical design of the rear wheel axis. The front wheel is ok as it is.
Thank you for reading all the way, I hope this information will serve you and your customers well. Maybe sending this information to whomever you were able to sell it to already would be nice also. It may prevent someone from having a bad day, if they are dimwitted as I was with a simple installation as this is :)
Cheers, and take care
Just bought a bunch off stuff for my new Ducati Hypermotard v2 sp and as usual with Evotech the quality is outstanding 👌 As soon as they have other parts for my bike I will be buying, EP is the go to parts for quality and ease of fitment