Plastic water pump drive gear ........why Ducati ?

Dezi said:

nattapatten , long term (well 12 months and 1000 track kilometres) and no issues at all ,changed oil and filter no szwarf in either so that would be a positive long term outcome in my books .
I have been running two bikes hence the low kilometre increase on the Pani.

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Thank a lot for your great information , and i have another question ,did you buy its from Ducati Kaemna ? and how long does it take for shipping to your local, thank you very much

Yes nattapatten I sourced them from Kaemma and it arrived here in Australia from memory just over a week .

My 2015 1299s also has the idle gear starts failing. I caught it in time when open the cover to install STM dry clutch. Note that the bike has very low odo, and just for the street (I bought it from previous owner with just 438 km on odo).

Though I have already replaced both gears with the OEMs, just want to know any advice about replacing with the metal? AFAICT, the paniagle r also has metal gears, all other pani have the plastic ones.

Guys, there are a lot of circumstances that can contribute to the plastic gear failures. There are a lot of relatively high mile motors with plastic pump gears that show little to no wear. If you had or are having a plastic pump gear failure then something abrasive got into your lubrication system and found it’s way better the pump gears.

I pulled the cover on a 17k mile 1299 and the pump gears looked brand new. That motor was clean from day 1, very little in the filter or magnet since new.

Additionally simple logic dictates that the metal gear pumps will themselves wear faster (bearing) as you have a lot more weight and rotating mass hanging off the pump shaft. Just a thought.

In my case there was no metal szwarf in the screen oil filter or oil , it is a low km engine that has been run at high RPM and likely high temp .
The damage to the teeth showed no indication of metal interference also the WP gear is relatively high up on the engine its not like it is sitting
down the bottom in a slurry of non existing metal shavings .The plastic did show discolouration , I am not a mechanical engineer so I can only assume
maybe heat or chemical reaction or just a dud plastic part from manufacturing .But there is evidence of this being a relatively common problem so my 2c would be
from a lack of quality control on the gears .I would assume that Ducati out source these gears they somewhat lost control of their high standard of in-house design and manufacturing
when the last of the 1098/1198 rolled out and the Panigale models started.

Dezi said:

In my case there was no metal szwarf in the screen oil filter or oil , it is a low km engine that has been run at high RPM and likely high temp .
The damage to the teeth showed no indication of metal interference also the WP gear is relatively high up on the engine its not like it is sitting
down the bottom in a slurry of non existing metal shavings .The plastic did show discolouration , I am not a mechanical engineer so I can only assume
maybe heat or chemical reaction or just a dud plastic part from manufacturing .But there is evidence of this being a relatively common problem so my 2c would be
from a lack of quality control on the gears .I would assume that Ducati out source these gears they somewhat lost control of their high standard of in-house design and manufacturing
when the last of the 1098/1198 rolled out and the Panigale models started.

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All possible. Seems random as I discussed the steel gear mod with Rapido when I was gathering parts for my 1299 build. They said, no issues with the plastic gears so I’m not sure how common it is relative to bikes in service. All good

Dezi said:

In my case there was no metal szwarf in the screen oil filter or oil , it is a low km engine that has been run at high RPM and likely high temp .
The damage to the teeth showed no indication of metal interference also the WP gear is relatively high up on the engine its not like it is sitting
down the bottom in a slurry of non existing metal shavings .The plastic did show discolouration , I am not a mechanical engineer so I can only assume
maybe heat or chemical reaction or just a dud plastic part from manufacturing .But there is evidence of this being a relatively common problem so my 2c would be
from a lack of quality control on the gears .I would assume that Ducati out source these gears they somewhat lost control of their high standard of in-house design and manufacturing
when the last of the 1098/1198 rolled out and the Panigale models started.

Click to expand...

I will agree with Dezi!
Post #27 shows pictures of failing plastic gears on my 1199R with 2100 miles, milage is 95% track and oil changes were / are done after every two days of riding! I would assume crap plastic used in production of the part is the reason for part to start to fail at such early stage. I think that there is no place for plastics in application such as mashing gears specially where plastic and metal gear mash against each other but than…

Yet there are thousands of examples of high mileage motors with dissimilar results. I have 2 in the garage right now. I’ll post pics of the gears. I wouldn’t agree that composite shouldn’t be used in that application. Perhaps there were material flaws from the Mfg on specific batches.

Perhaps that particular composite was not suitable for certain operating parameters. Don’t know. I just wouldn’t discount composites in that application in general. Anyhow, all good. If you like the steel gears, run them. I do have the steel gears as well. They came with the pumps but I wouldn’t have a problem running plastic.

100 % Bo ,
not sure why Ducati/Audi VW or who ever owned Ducati at the time used composite , be it price point , noise or whatever reason I feel it is a mistake but again I am no engineer .
In my post way back on page 2 image #5 you can see the composite gear has to engage with a steel one so there is always going to be increased stress from two very different materials .
Your post #27 the images clearly show fatigue in the middle of the composite teeth .
Blind Freddy could see that is not from contamination but engaging stress.

Dezi, you keep beating the same drum man. You are right, you are not an engineer and how many pani motors have you had apart? You’re making assumptions based on a scenario that you had. Doesn’t mean the engineering is flawed. It means in your particular application under your environmental conditions, you had a pump gear failure.

Absolutely no possible way to completely rule out foreign particle contamination as a possible catalyst for the cascade of events that led to the gears ultimate demise. I’m also not saying that there was contamination. You seem to be centered on absolutes that just aren’t warranted.

Whatever the case does it warrant guys paying a bunch of money to some Ducati service monkey to pull the cover maybe. If you do your own work, .... it, pull the cover and take a look.

Ah well yes I'm beating the drum mate I F'n started this thread LOL
Lets put it to bed I had moved on mine is fixed the only reason I came back in here was someone directly asked me a question .

Both these plastic gear sets carry the same part number but appear to have different composite compositions. The darker set are from a 2015 1299. 17k plus and 6 track days when they were removed. They are spotless.

The white set are from a 2013 1199 with well over 28k miles. They are spotless.

This pretty much confirmed that A the design isn’t junk and B that these gear sets performed flawlessly in their application. To imply that the composite pump gears are a poor design and not adequate in their application is simple not accurate. You are looking at two examples. Throw in manufacturing anomalies, operational anomalies etc and sure, like any other part, they can and obviously in certain cases do fail.

There are other plastic parts to contend with. The cam runners in the RS motors are billet. Stock motors have plastic runners. You should see the cam timing at high RPM when those things distort.