New Motorcycle – A New Challenge To Get It "Just Right"

Motorcycles are unfortunately neither as comprehensively equipped nor as adjustable as cars. There are often accessories missing that need to be purchased from the manufacturer or aftermarket to make it "complete" for ones own use case.

This fact has created a healthy system of aftermarket parts and some manufacturers are jumping in to gain some after sales money as well. Neither BMW nor Ducati are different in this regard, although the availability of 3rd party accessories for the GS is way beyond what Ducati could ever hope for.

Now, since we have the new 2016 Multistrada 1200S Touring in the garage, we had to add a few parts well:

• Protection bars, so that a simple tip over isn't going to hurt the expensive plastics all too much, just the also expensive stainless steel Touratech bars that are sold as Ducati original equipment.
• A brake light that flashes a few times (4x) and then comes on solid to gain more attention from following traffic.
• A tank bag for convenient storage of wallet, keys, (sun) glasses, phone, ear plugs and so on.
• Ducati offers a top case kit including the case but we opted for just the carrier as we already have Givi cases and didn't need another one. This has been quite an adventure so far, read below ...
• A Crampbuster – Andrea loves this even on a bike with cruise control as it is really comfortable  once you are used it.
• For wind protection the Multi is actually pretty good, but there is some buffeting for Andrea and a lot of buffeting for me. So we are trying to lower the amount of buffeting with a different windshield.

So far installed are the brake light, the Crampbuster, the tank bag and the protection bars. We have the windshield and will give the new one a try tomorrow, we also have most of the parts for the Givi top case, but not all yet.

Top Case Adventure

The 1200S Touring already comes with side cases which we decided to keep even though we don't like them all too much, but it didn't come with a top case or even a mount plate for one.

The kit Ducati offers includes the case and the mount and needs an additional set of painted parts to complete the look. We already have two top cases that are perfectly fine and didn't really want to add another one so we decided to buy the mounting kit as parts. 

Yes, you have heard correctly. Ducati does not sell the top case mount as a kit. Only together with the top case. Completely ridonkulous in my opinion, but okay, here we are. 

What did we do? We ordered "the kit" as parts, just without the top case. Or so we thought. When the parts arrived this was the state:

• One large rubber piece was completely missing from the order.
• The Givi plate didn't come with the little rubber spacers which prevent the case from rattling. 
• One set of bolts needed 4 but the dealer only ordered 2. 
• One set of bolts and one set of nuts needed two each, dealer ordered 5 each.
• A set of spacers should include 4 but only 2 were ordered.
• The dealer ordered 1 special screw (shouldered), but 2 are needed.

Wow. It's been going for over three weeks now and we are still missing parts. Is it really that hard to just offer a kit and prevent the above frustration?

I'm looking forward to finally receiving the remaining parts to find out what else is screwed up in that area. 

More to come – including photos.