Ducati 848 Windscreen Change

When I got my '08 Ducati 848 Superbike at Christmas 2015, it wore the tinted screen shown in the pic above. Now, I am not a fan of tinted screens, no not one bit - but it seems that almost every bike I have bought has had one, installed by a previous owner. This includes not only this 848, but my '95 Ducati 900SS/SP and our '86 GSX-R1100.

Despite their undoubted utility in helping keep sun off the instruments, I've always thought that tinted screens were pretty tacky, and I replaced them immediately with clear ones.

In the case of the 848, the stock clear screen was included in the sale, but it was scratched and I didn't want to remount it on the bike. I also wasn't enthusiastic about $pending hundred$ on a new stock screen from Ducati... so I had a look on eBay and found a brand-new double bubble screen from a Chinese vendor for less than $30 including shipping. It had to be worth a try at that price!

The screen took quite awhile to arrive but when it did it looked good, quite thick and substantial. Then I went to mount it and discovered that I needed a Torx screwdriver for the windscreen screws. No problem right? WRONG... nobody in town had a T7 Torx driver for a sensible price. So back to eBay again and a set of T5-T8 Torx drivers were on the way from China to my house, for less than $5 all in.
 

So last weekend I unbolted the stock screen and had a go at installing the new one. The Chinese replica fit well, the only flaw was a partially drilled mounting hole that was easy to drill out myself. Installation was a bit of a pain though...

There are two screws at the very front of the screen that you have to be really careful with, as the rubber nutserts can easily fall down into the nether regions at the front of the bike. I held onto them with long visegrips as I undid them, but it was impossible to hold them from behind when installing the new screen. I ended up supergluing the nutserts to the screen itself. This worked a treat and allowed me to thread in the Torx bolts with no problems. I figure if I need to change screens again I'll just carefully peel them off, or failing that, buy new nutserts.

I can't see wanting to go back to a tinted screen though. To my eyes the clear stock item looks so much better. Not sure it'll block as much breeze though as it's a lot lower than the tinted job. I haven't licensed the bike to go for a ride yet so maybe I'll update this post once I do.

Nice, eh?

 

Oh yeah... while we're on the topic of mods, I added a nice carbon fibre front fender as well. I love carbon and I think it looks pretty sharp :-)

UPDATE: I had the bike out for a ride a couple weeks ago, with the new clear screen. I didn't notice a real significant difference from the old one. Still a torturous riding position, but an amazing ride :-)