FOR THE DO-IT-YOURSELF DUCATI OWNER

SIDE POD REMOVAL

$0

Long Phillips Screwdriver, Zip Ties

For the longest time I was obsessed with leaving the pods on in case of a fall- I figured they were for protection as well as venting.  Well, they suck.  They won't protect the side in a fall and they are ugly as sin.  So, I decided to get rid of them

They are attached via a single phillips head screw on the underside of the pod.   Once it's out, they come right off.

Now do the same on the other side.   Be careful, as the hose on this side is over a nipple and is hard to get off.

What's that, you say?  Hoses?  Where do these go?  Well, no problem, we'll fix that right up.  These hoses are vents for the carbs.  There is one for each carb, and there is also a small cannister filter on each one.  You wan't to put these in a dry place, and also a place where not a lot of dirt will get.

Luckily, they are long enough to play around with.  I put the right side carb's hose up by the battery positive cable as shown.  When the tank is closed, it's dry and clean so I don't need to worry.

I put the left side tube up under the battery negative cable, as shown.  You want to be careful with the placement of this hose, at it is prone to kinking up by the filter.  Be sure that when you route it up to wherever, you don't kink it.  When I switched to pod filters, I took off the lower portion of this hose and the other and routed them out of the way.

You're left with one more hose that originally went into the left hand pod.

I originally curved it up into the center channel of the airbox and it fit quite well.  However, I noticed that it leaks fluid (presumably gas runoff) once in a while, and it got all over my valve cover.  So, I then pointed it down and zip-tied it to the center bar in the frame (that runs diagonally across the middle right underneath the carbs) and it hasn't leaked since.  I want to get a longer hose and route it somewhere where it won't get dirty or wet, though.  When I did the pod filters, I combined this drain hose into the two float bowl drain hoses as shown on the jet kit page.

You're also left with some exposed wires and plugs that were originally hidden by the pod.  Simply push them up behind the frame and secure them with zip ties.

While I was down there, I noticed how lame the float bowl drain tubes were.  Every time I drain my bowls (which isn't very often), I end up pulling the tubes out of there original routing so I can drain them into a large gas can.  Why not just take them off and put them on only when I need to drain the floats?  Bad idea.

I did get rid of them, but an astute reader pointed out that it wasn't a good idea to cap them off, because fuel overflow from the floats needs to be able to flow through.  So, I took a short length of clear hose and routed them to my own home-made container.  They were only slightly visible, but the setup didn't really work.  When I did my jet kit/pod filter install I combined these hoses with the other drain hose using tees and routed one hose down the side of the bike as shown here.  So, if you've capped off the drain holes, it's a good idea to put the hoses back on.  Sorry!

WOW!  Huge improvement without the pods, hoses, and drain tubes cluttering everything up.  Now I can see those beautiful intake runners.

And here's the stuff removed.  Be sure that you always save everything you remove.  I can't gaurantee that this was a good idea at all, just that I did it and so far have had no problems.  I may eventually decide that I was wrong and put it back on.  So, don't throw the stuff out!

And there you have it- just one more simple way to improve the looks of your Monster on the cheap.

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