Some SD's have suffered from the Ethanol in todays fuels.
Besides my SD, I have an 06 Multistrada. It's on it's second tank. Ducati replaced the first under warranty. These things swell to the point they cant get them off the bike. They replace them with identical units, and the they swell as well.

Here's a link to a company that is making a new tank using a material that is both paintable, and not susceptible to Ethanol.
They are doing this via a crowdfunding site.


They currently make a larger tank for the Hypermotard and a couple others, and have a really good rep.

I'm going to email the owner Chris and find out if they would consider a SD tank if this current project pans out the way they hope it does.
I doubt Ethanol will go away, so I'm hoping we can get a tank lined up so our bikes dont see the price depreciation that the Multi experienced.

Crowdfunding site;


For a history of the Multi tank problems thread;

Solution? For what? Last I spoke with the principals there (located nearby) - they don't really do KTM. Discussed much elsewhere BTW ...

IIRC CA Cycleworks uses polyethylene. Blow molded like milk jugs. Not exactly "high tech". Tooling aside, they are relatively cheap to make (CA Cycleworks pricing is ridiculous considering). Same stuff used for dirt bike tanks and plastics. Polyethylene is Well known to be impervious to most materials (some types of laboratory-grade pure ethanol are packaged in polyethylene) - assuming that proper stabilizers are incorporated appropriate to the application. Best thing about them, is that they are oversized for some of the applications (on models where that's a welcome thing).

They are not really paintable (at least not easily/conventionally to obtain a high quality finish), and one of the reasons why some of CA Cycleworks products are described to track use only - too ugly for the typically vain Duc owner.

Duc has problems with ALL their plastic tanks BTW; Classic/1098/1198/Monster/'Tard/'Strada ... And by most accounts they've been really good about replacing them - even out of warranty (which is a mixed bag with KTM).

Again (elsewhere), if I were tasked to design a plastic moto tank, I would make it in two parts: The tank itself in polyethylene with a great deal of UV stabilizer, and a paintable outer shell (a removable, separate part that isn't generally exposed to gasoline/ethanol) in polyamide (Nylon, etc.); the latter of which is what SD tanks have been made of to date. An approach that some manufacturers are beginning to use.

They are using something new from Ticona Plastics. It's not the same stuff they did they Hyper or other tanks with.
They are using this new material because it is paintable.
When you say their stuff is expensive, I dont understand. I know what goes into making these molds, big cnc mills.
Big mills get big bucks. Hell, $600 for a tank that wont expand and leak is cheap compared to the Duc part that is close to 2 grand and will expand and leak.

"Again (elsewhere), if I were tasked to design a plastic moto tank, I would make it in two parts: The tank itself in polyethylene with a great deal of UV stabilizer, and a paintable outer shell (a removable, separate part that isn't generally exposed to gasoline/ethanol) in polyamide (Nylon, etc.); the latter of which is what SD tanks have been made of to date. An approach that some manufacturers are beginning to use."

+1

A mold for the SD tank from conception to final product would run close to $14k usd. It would be a 4 part aluminium mold...


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