OK, for this week, the blog will trend back toward the MH900e corner of my personal attention span with a quick primer on how to get rid of the Autoretract Sidestand on your MH900e.  This procedure is very simple and took me a total of about 5 minutes including taking the photographs.

To undertake this modification you’ll simply need a pair of pliers and a new spring plate from Ducati, part number 82912602A.  The new spring plate cost me approximately $6 U.S., so it’s a very inexpensive part.

Replacement Spring Plate

 This part replaces the spring plate installed by Ducati at the factory.  The original piece is rather straight and interferes with the nut on the sidestand pivot bolt.  This keeps the sidestand spring from going “over center” where it would hold the sidestand down.

Original Sidestand Spring Plate Still Installed

 The replacement plate is curved so that it won’t interfere with the sidestand pivot nut.  Here’s a photo of the two pieces side-by-side.  The original bracket is the one with the springs still attached.

Side-By-Side Comparison of Spring Plates (new one below old)

 To change the spring plate, begin by using a pair of pliers to disengage the two sidestand springs from their catch on the sidestand, then slip the spring plate off of its catch pin on the sidestand bracket attached to the motor.  Not lay the two brackets as show above and transfer the springs from the old bracket to the new one.  Now slip the new spring plate over its catch pin (with the elbow of the plate away from the sidestand pivot bolt) and reattach the springs to their catch on the sidestand. 

Sidestand with New Spring Plate

Voila!  Now you have a sidestand that stays put when you put it down.  You’ll notice in the final photo that the new plate curves around the sidestand pivot bolt nut, allowing the spring to extend “over center” to hold the sidestand in place when in the lowered position.  Be careful when riding your bike, as you might be more used to the autoretract feature than you realize….and nobody wants to put thier MH on the ground over something as minute as a spring plate.

Feel free to post on the Forum if you have any questions about this procedure, or anything else you might want to know.

Cloner in ABQ

After a few months of hiatus, the MH900e Owners Club is finally back.  Far from finished, but ready to serve the community of loyal Ducati MH900e aficionados.

I’m Brian De Groodt, and I guess I’m now president, ring-leader, or something official here.  In any case, it doesn’t really matter to me.  I’m just happy to put the community back together and get our group served with information and conversation about the MH.

This site is definitely still a work in progress.  I have literally gigs of information from the old site (Thanks JohnC!) and will be uploading it over the coming days, weeks, months.  If you have a specific request, please email me and let me know.  If I have it, I’m happy to share it and put it to the front of the line.

For now, here’s what we have right now.  We have this blog/main page.  We have the Forums page for all things considered.  What we don’t have right now is direct integration between MH900e.org (blog) and the forums.  So if you post a comment on the blog, you won’t need a password, but you also won’t automatically be logged into the forum section.  Everyone needs to register to participate in the forum.  It’s easy.  I think the forums give us a little more functionality than we had previously, but are still pretty basic. If there’s a reason to move to something more advanced in the future, we’ll discuss it as a group and figure out what makes sense.

I’d really like to see us get back to the same or better level of participation we had previously.  That includes owner registration, which I’ll start working on as a next step.  Ideally we can record the whereabouts of all 2,000 units.

Finally, welcome to your home! If there’s anything you’d like to see, I’d love to hear it.

That’s all for now. 

BD #760