Originally Posted by Spyder_Venom

I don't know who that guys is, but I highly doubt he has ever owned one let alone worked on a ducati. There isn't a professional duc mechanic that I have ever met that would pull a motor do to valve lash. I have done these vavles many times, hell I would take a desmo vavle over a R1 ANY day of the week when it comes to valve adjustment. You just need know know and understand the system - and have the correct tools. There isn't any guess work using a bucket/shim assembly and that makes adjustment very easy penidng you have a micrometer. You can run a desmo motor over 11.5k - mine goes to 13k all the time and remember these are twins, not a I4 with a little ass stoke. What is the redline on a RC51, if I recall it's only 10k-ish.

Back in the mid 90's when the 916 and then the 916SPS came out, there wasn't a bike that could touch them. But what a shock, they ran into money troubles and defently didn't keep up with development from as early as the late 90's to current. I've ridden a couple RC's, they are defently a nice bike but they just are not the same as a duc - nothing I've ever ridden handles like a Ducati.

The maintanence is defently over played. These bikes come apart a lot smoother than any jap bike I have owned. Granted the service intervals on jap bikes are 12k-25K pending on the model, but I wouldn't have it any other way. These bikes are very well engineered for the most part and are cake to work on.