Everything looked more or less normal except for the connecting rod side clearance - I posted to the list & Rich suggested that I don't consider putting it back together - wise advise as it turns out.
My bike has an indicated 63,000 kms on it. I have put the last 37,000 on it myself & believe it to be fairly accurate (I have done a few miles with broken a speedo cable or speedo drive washer). The bottom end has never been apart. The bike has had only 3 owners - the first only put 1800 kms on it over 5 years. The previous owner & I have taken good care of it.
When it was apart, I couldn't feel any play in the rods at all. The side clearance measured 0.83 mm - just barely over Ducati's wear limit of 0.8 mm.
I believe that if I had have just put it back together (as the guys at work suggested), it would have grenaded itself within a very short period of time.
I have uploaded some photos as I thought that some listers might like to see what one at the wear limit looks like - once it gets much worse than this, the evidence is destroyed.
You can see the wear on the thrust washers - more wear towards the outside of the washer:
The washers then spun on the crank pin as shown by the grooves ground in it:
This allowed the race of the connecting rod bearings to pivot some as evidenced by the marks towards the outside of the race (several of us at work tried - none could feel any clearance):
This movement allowed the race to contact the inside of the rods. All the time that this was happening, hardened bits of metal was being ground off of the pin, washers, etc. and this allowed this to happen to the rods (the punch points towards where one of the hardened bit ended up at one time):
This grindings had this kind of impact on the oil pump:
Not pretty & this was at the wear limit. There was no knocking, no visible metal in the oil when I changed the oil, ... Fixing it is still going to be costly but I'm glad I followed Rich's advise because the situation was likely to deteriorate very quickly from here.
