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Please help me fix my overheating.


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And if the rads are off the bike, you can flush then reverse flush and flip them around and shake them a bit to see if anything funky comes out. 

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I feel the pain of diagnosing an elusive problem.  Been there done that on my VFR800.  These bikes are aging and most of them are not garage queens.

 

Thankfully, the cooling system is mostly mechanical and fairly simple.  You've eliminated a lot of variables but not all.  You're still rocking the old radiators and the old water pump.  Are those original from when the bike was new?  I recently had to replace my original from new water pump with a NEW OEM water pump, which failed within 6 mos!  The new OEM water pump's impeller seal/bearings failed....the impeller was difficult to spin.  So things like this can happen.

 

Replace the pump.  Replace the radiators.  These don't last forever.  Based on my own experience, it's better not to spend time and spin your wheels trying to figure out if a 10+ year old part is still working correctly.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.  If it's a suspect, replace it.  A few hundred dollars is money well spent if you plan to keep your bike longer.  It's either that or buy a new bike for $10k - $16k.  That's how I justify the decision to either fix or replace a bike and I'm at peace with it.

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Ain’t that the truth, and this was a 3 owner bike. 

 

I back flowed the radiators today, and I think that made a major difference. Lots of little sand like material came out. 

 

The cooling System cleaner was drained and it also had had a little bit of calcium buildup or something. I re added the cleaner and used a filter to filter out the scale and other deposits and hope it does more in the future. 

 

I didn’t take a before picture but I remember seeing some kind of build up on the water pump fan. I pulled it apart today. Looks like new! The cleaner must’ve worked. 

 

A friend of mine recommended replacing the coolant overflow hose (cap to bottle) I think this was a major player in my recent testing being a success. Maybe the old one had micro cuts that wouldn’t allow coolant to flow both ways? (I noticed before only the level of coolant rose but never fell!)

 

I also realized the fan not working was because I am stupid and forgot to plug it in... worked great today after assembly. 

 

...but as of testing an hour ago things seem to be going better. I rode on the interstate in VTEC for 5 minutes straight and it never got about 222*F at 73* ambient temps. 

 

Will test this weekend in 80*F+ weather and see how it does. I’m pretty excited, I’ve made some progress thanks to you all. Thank You Very Very Much 🙃!

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That’s great news. See I said ‘air flow problem’ and here you had forgotten to hook up the fan!  Sometimes it’s the little things. Seems like your frustration and effort may have paid off in the end!

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Glad this helps someone besides me. 

 

So at speed im seeing temps in 80*F weather of 182*F now, so at pace it’s doing quite well!

 

its still having issues when at a stop though, can’t seem to figure that one out. It’ll still kick the fan on at 220*F and get up to 230*F. But with a quick blip of the throttle it goes back down a few degrees. 

 

Ill swap back in a good coolant tonight and do a bit more cooling testing. 

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Also very odd but will note - it was only 55*F last night and the bike never got sbove 190*. But when I pulled in the drive and turned the bike off, the cleaner and water boiled out of the overflow container. 

 

Ill swap it out and see what the deal is!

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And... Also under the general heading of "air flow" is the need to clean the accumulated grease and coating of road grime off of the radiators.  Anything coating the radiators will interfere with (reducing) their ability to dump heat into the atmosphere.

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As I stated before, cleaner and water will boil. 

It is only meant as a temp fill to clean system. 

It will not handle a system that specifies 50/50 coolant water mix.

You should be right once it is all removed  

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1 hour ago, VFROZ said:

As I stated before, cleaner and water will boil. 

It is only meant as a temp fill to clean system. 

It will not handle a system that specifies 50/50 coolant water mix.

You should be right once it is all removed  

That is the truth. Flush either tomorrow or Tuesday planned and then throwing everything together. Thank you. 

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2 minutes ago, Urbanengineer said:

That is the truth. Flush either tomorrow or Tuesday planned and then throwing everything together. Thank you. 

 

Good luck with it Urban. You've covered everything now.

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