New belts on my old Ducati Multistrada 1000ds first start

I do think there is something cool about seeing the moving parts, the dry clutch open and the cam belts driving the Desmo heads.
This was a couple of years ago, it was first start after i fitted new belts for the first time, a very nervous moment when i hit the start button waiting to see if i had lined everything up right and counted the belt teeth correctly and find that the big high compression pistons were not going to smash into the Desmo controlled valves... and that the 'old school' method of tensioning the belts with a 5mm and a 6mm allen key worked and no use of fancy electronics, harmonics, frequency measuring devices etc... just if the 5mm can fit between the belt and the tensioner wheel and the 6mm can't, it's right, and it was!
Thankfully i did it all correctly and it has done 1000s of miles at very high revs since without any issue.

[@Nick-dz4ml]

Seeing the moving engine parts is just so cool!
Have you done a lot of miles on it? Has it been reliable? I've heard of a lot of electrical problems on them, did you also experience those?

[@odysseusdrakos2008]

hi, the bike has been 100% reliable in the years i have had it except for normal wear, from use, i had to change the clutch friction plates which only cost about £70 and took about 2 minutes to swap over. and i had to put new brushes in the starter motor, the new brush kit was only about £25 but it was a hell of a job to get the starter motor off, a hell of a job to get it back together again with the new brushes installed and a hell of a job to refit the starter motor, horrible job but hopefully that will be it now for another 60,000 miles. absolutely love the bike.