Braking and Banjos

In an earlier post, I mentioned strange problems with a heavy judder under braking, something I’ve seen reported by a number of people in various fora. It’s been a while, but we finally managed to find a solution. Even better, it’s a very cheap and easy solution. I’d gotten as far as having the the head bearings changed, to little effect – they were rusted and badly worn (traditional on the STs, apparently, as Ducati don’t seem to get around to greasing them at the factory), but not completely shagged — they would however only have lasted another few thousand miles. After that, I was looking at the fork slider bushes and the disks themselves — neither of them being cheap options.

The guys at Snell’s, my local dealer, then got in touch with Ducati UK, who suggested trying the modified banjo assembly for the brake master cylinder that Ducati produced to address similar problems with some Multistradas. So we did, it was fitted this morning and all is now smooth as silk.

So, for anyone suffering from that dreaded judder under braking, one solution (YMMV) is a simple banjo kit: It’s listed as a Multistrada part, number 69922861A. In my case, it was supplied and fitted under warranty, despite the bike being 18 months outside the warranty period. Result, and very impressed with both Snell’s and Ducati UK.