captainchris13

When it is that hot you risk head damage. The metal near the exhaust valves is so hot the water is boiling locally there and preventing proper contact of coolant to the metal surface. Running a water wetting agent gains you the ability to get the heat out before it gets that hot. Running straight water gets you additional cooling power over coolant. Then you just need an anti corrosive to prevent it from rusting away. Doesn't work in freezing temps, I keep mine in the garage to solve that. I also popped the little metal bit out of the thermostat (the wobbly crimped pin) for a bit of constant flow improvement. This was all very easy to do (minus getting at the thermostat but I had to change coolant hoses in that area anyway), and has totally made this a non-issue for me. Best of luck.

Ya, after seeing a pic on an English forum of an air box FULL of acorns and laughing, I went and checked mine. Yep, acorns, poop, fur... It's happened several times now, I think I'm going to add some rabbit wire to the outside of the snorkel. My bike lives in my garage too, not outside. They also ate some of my tail light wiring insulation, I taped it, but it should probably be replaced.

Careful on that one, with the fan diabled and a tailwind ( happened to me in vegas) you get a zero airflow condition. I used to sell the JB stuff, i can still get it but they have agreements about you van only sell your assigned area. Mailing it out is a no no, but i dont work for them anymore. They are popular in hot rod stuff, and thats theyre main market. Hot rod magazine has done a bunch of heads up testing on a dyno and it always wins. Redline Water Wetter is similiar, but you still need an anti corrosive and lubricant to go with it. Getting rid of the antifreeze alone gives you more cooling power, adding a proper surfactant like the redline or jb cool is even better. Do worry about freezing though, you lose that protection. If i remeber right, a 50/50 mix of ethelyne glycol is like 80% of the cooling power of straight water, propalyne glycol is a bit worse again. I used to fix check engine lights in GM cars with it when they couldnt figure out the problem. Short version, your coolant goes acidic eventually and the dissimiliar metals in your cooling system turn into a slight battery. Stick your multimeter to ground and in your radiator fluid and see if you read dc voltage. The anti corrosive turns it to neutral PH, no voltage generated, and your sensors on your engine stop reading false voltages. http://justicebrothers.com/pages/products/products_carcare_radiator_additives.htm All their stuff is really better than 99% of everything else out there, they had a genius chemist years ago who formulated everything they have. Is there room on the second radiator to run a fan blowing opposite the first? Then therenis always airflow over a radiator under any condition... I dont remember how much room is in there, ,its been a while since i unwrapped the plastics off it.

Your exactly right, im not argueing that thats whats happening, and you dd a really nice job of explaining and documenting it as well. To simplify it, you have a reduced dumping of thermal energy at low forward speeds due to the fan 'fighting' the air moving across the bike. So the coolant has to be at a higher temp to dump heat. It does dump some heat or the engine would go into runaway overheat, just not enough. When the coolant gets that extra bit hot though is when you start getting hot spots in the head. So it does still cool the motor under that condition but not enough. My answer is simply to add a bit of increased efficiency to the whole cooling system ( maybe 10%?) and then it has sufficient capacity to deal with the condition of reduced air flow. I can ride slow speeds up steep hills for long periods of tme now in the dead of summer. I live on a mountain served by a 2 lane road that ALSO leads to a damn tourist destination, so i encounter this a lot. Answers like more air fliw over the radiator increases its efficiency, a higher pressure cap raises the boiling point and the higher delta temp relative to ambiant also increases its efficiency in dumping btu's. I just thought about tbe problem in a lazy way as i wanted to be riding and not reinventing my fan ( i did think about it, it was my next option if the chemicals weren enough of an increase) as in " whats the easiest way to get a bit more efficiency in the cooling system" Its just a much cheaper easier mod. The runaway head temp thing i used to get at idle too. It ould get to about 195f, then spike to 225 and not come down untill i rode 5 min over 30 mph or shut the bike down for 2 minutes. Both were annoying. When i finally get my torocharger, ill probably do the fan mod too... Now no longer need to worry about my cooling system, it just works like it should have from the factory.

Cool deal on the Fan mods, but its not the problem. The stock fan is adequate, but the coolant isnt. The problem you it is the temp suddenly surges p and won come down till you get some serious air and water moving in there. Ok, so what you really have ( and there is an old thread around here somewhere we hashed it out)is a localized boiling issue in the head area. Whe the water boils on the metal it stops cooln well as the forming steam insulates it from the water. Think of a really hot fry pan, drop water on, the drop just glides around for a long time. If the pan is a bit less hot, the drop of water sticks, tansfers heat efficiently andnthen evaporates. My last landlord is an old indy racer and sells automotive chemicals. Red line, justice brothers, etc... I tell him about it and he hands me two bottles. One was a cooling system protectant, so no corrosion issues. The other was a wetting agent, calld JB Cool. I added them into an empty coolin sys with bottled water. Solved. The 99% water mix is better than with coolant, the protectant you just need, the cool helps increase the heatbtransfer from metal to liquid and does a good enough job thathe meal never gets critical hot in there. If anybody wants some (their fuel injection cleaner is the bestnive ever used as well) you can look for a local JB guy or if nothing else i could help in shipping some out to you. I can sit at idle now in the summer and the stock fan keeps it cool. Im sure the lack of a weird hot spot in the head has got to help the head in the long run.

uh, move? do you love the city or the bike more? choose. i say this because of the stress you put yourself through will shorten your life and make you old before you years.

ya, i was about to ask the same thing. i think the weak link might be the aluminum stubs where they attach to the engine bolt. Why not just have a special hardened bolt made that is longer? that way you could bolt tthe sliders straight to it. aluminum tends to bend and crack and alum threads tend to give up in an impact situation. just a thought.

I just put 30amp fuses in them since thats what the factory harness has in it. The biggest change in voltage from what I've seen on my bike and others is when replacing that 'black' voltage monitor wire from the R/R. Theres a major major progressive resistance problem in that wire somewhere. Someday I want to take the front end off and track that wire down to see exactly whats the problem in the wire from the ignition to the R/R. Mine has a major issue with about 9.3 ohms of resistance from the monitor wire to ignition, which was upping voltage output to 16V +. Since replacing that wire, I can remove the fuses from positive side running to the regulator to the battery to test it and it only causes a 0.6v voltage drop. So basically by rerunning that black wire to my battery allowing correct voltage monitoring, solve a lot of overcharging issues in that alone. This is interesting... Honda Went and added that black wire to the 6th gen fron the 5th which used the pos output leads as the sensing circuit since that cisruit could become hot and give a false reading. Problem solved right? Wrong. Then they went and made that sensing wire have a lousy connection to the battery since they moved it to the front of the bike and ran through the harness. Why? I upgraded my 5th gen bike with a 6th gen R&R and i put that black wire to the fuel pump lead with a wraparound and solder joint inches away from the battery. Its a good solid attachment ppoint without adding another ring terminal to my battery (which has too many and is a pain to take the screws on and off now). 14.3 volts all over the place. rev it, 14.3. low rpms 14.3 everything turned on, 14.3. I would bet just the simple act of taking that black wire straight back to the battery and not run it throught the harness, would be the most uselful electrical upgrade you could do. everything else helps, but it is more like a safety of making everything overkill. Also, i notice no battery drain with it set up that way. i also went with a AGM battery when i did mine as they tend to like a hair more volts that a lead acid and should live longer anyway.

I still have to sort out how I will rewire this, but I am getting 35 ohms between my R/R and my battery. I think I'm in for a new riding experience soon. 35 ohms!?!?!? you either forgot a decimal point or you have a really bad contact somewhere in your system. At 35 ohms your bike would just stop running in 30 min... Still, if that was .35 than its still high, i like to see roughly .01 cold, and as high as .05 when the wires are hot and the bike has been running for 30 min at speed. when the wires are hot they incrrease their resistance, sometimes it goes up drastically, if the wires are big enough, they dont change much at all. Could you post a link to a decent tutorial on how to do this properly? I'm interested in doing this for the connections on my 4th Gen, but the only thing I've ever soldered before was copper pipe. Um, not much different really. Make sure your wires are clean with no trace of corrosion, strip them back 3/8 to 1/2", twist together with fingers or pliers firmly (making good contact already), give a light brush of flux or use rosin core solder, and just warm them with a soldering iron untill the solder melts in thoroughly. You can also use one of theose little cigarette lighhters that are 'windproof' and make a flame like a small jet. just keep the flame from touching the wire so they get the heat blast, but no uncombusted fuel. Then when it cools wrap multiple times with electrical tape. thats for an end to end connection, for a button hole (doubling up factory wires WITHOUT cutting them) you strip off an inch of insulation very carefully, then poke a hole through dividing them into two at the section. stick new wire through, part in halves and wrap in opposite directions tying the whole t-joint together very tightly (no looseness or air gaps). solder as above and wrap as above. Personally i like silver solder as it is a bit harder than normal electronics solder and has even better electrical/thermal properties. Its available most anywhere that sells electronics even radio shack.

He was having a little trouble getting the shiny aluminum "oil caps" off of the VFR dampers and was concerned that there was something holding them on (press fit, hidden setscrew, magic), unlike the F3 caps that practically fell off of the dampers. He didn't want to force something unknowingly and tear it up. :joystick: I told him that they'll come off with just a little gentle tapping....nothing in particular holding them on, except magic. THEN he'll get to the compression valve circlip, but he's already taken the F3 stuff apart so he's familiar with that process. Well, those shiny little caps smited me since yesterday, so anyone who happens upon this thread in the future, know this. A little bit of heat and they will fall off. I used a map gas torch for 10 sec and then they will come off in a (gloved) hand, or just give them a little push with a screwdriver or something. my first one fell off when i turned it upside down to get a grab on it after heating. :unsure: i thought they had loctite or something or were screwed on. nope!

Um, yes and yes and no. Yes starting is the most taxing moment the elec sees, and upping the wires might help a bit but not really since they are only carrying load for a few seconds and dont have a chance to get hot and be a resistor. The ground might again help a little depending ont the resistance of your gound circuit under that load (snap on makes a kool tester...) but the limiting factor is probably just your battery. It can only put out so much juice at 12.5v befoe it drops, and drops, and drops... on a dead short it may sit at 6-7 volts for a few seconds before you melt something. So cranking it may drop to 11 volts or maybe 10 depending on your battery age/condition/attitude. I have seen vehicle with REALLY bad, frayed, corroded battey cables/terminals go for a long time since they only needed about 1/2 a second of juice time to get the motor started. Now, take that same situation and run out of gas and need to crank it for 30 seconds, well, that is the start to a real bad day and a big bill to fix everything you have been ignoring as you are now S O L. chris

ahhh, its protecticing your main harrness. if you have say your headlight wires short, the 30 fuse will blow saving your entire harness from melting. wires make terrible fusible links as they are usually bundled with other wires which they can melt to in a short failure situation. you would have to increase the wire size from RR to batt, RR to fuse, fuse to main distro point to gain the benefits while still being protected. Sorry, forgot about that fuse when i gave advice earlier, nice catch. Well, and my bike is tucked away in the garage since we have had 4 days of freezing rain and even a bit of hail... i should have gone and looked.

well, when i did my RR i soldered theyellow leads to the stator eliminating the connector. i also did a button hole tie in for my extra black lead since i used a 6th gen RR on a 5th gen but i soldered it. Always solder. Always. Dont argue about it, just do it. Motorcycles are a harsh envirornment for electrical connections, and you solder for teh same reason you use grease on connectors, not because it helos the connection (it makes it a bit worse actually) but that it does keep it from corroding and therefore makes it stay the same for a long long time. A soldered button hole joint wrappped with e-tape or painted with liquid e-tape will last you a lifetime, but one tha is just wrapped will probably last 5 years at the very most if you did a really good job in wrapping. Moisture (and sometimes salt from oceans or roads in winter depending on where you ride) gets in there inevitably and makes your connection degrade, and then it turns into a resistor and starts getting hot, and then fails, or maybe fails intermittantly. Many years of working on Boat wiring, motorcycle wiring, and industrial wiring in a plating shop have shown wihtout a doubt, you want solder to improve the joint and make it not corrode again. This is the same school of thought as to why you gold plate connectors. Gold is not as good a conductor as you would be lead to believe, it is actually usually worse than what it is going on. However, because it resists corrosion, it will at least ALWAYS be the same level of connection rather than degrading rapidly over time as whatever surface oxidizes as would alum, steel, copper, silver, etc... This makes a reliable connection and that is usually more important (think AV cables that are cheap and need twisted every so often to get your picture and sound right). As far as oversizing the wires, ya, thats a good idea too as they are just a hair undersize for some reason so doubling them up creates extra capacity and lowers the resistance of them significantly. This is why the went to the extra black wire in the 6th gen rectifier straight to the battery, since they were sensing voltage at the RR over the red and black leads which were slightly undersize and would get hot and give a flase reading. The black lead carries no current so remains cool and makes a better measurement point. The better answer would have been for honda to just upsize the wires and leave the black wire off it. I have no idea why they didn't do it that way... Speaking of the RR, the otehr reason they fail is there is NO AIRFLOW in there... i put a fan on my orig one and it still failed (or was already failing). If you look at the space it is in there is no exit for air. Air wont come in and flow across if there is no exit. The newer ones are up front in the fairing i believe where they get more airflow. i was thinking of drilling a 1" hole in the underside of the tail side plastic and putting a clamshell cover over it to help vent air and still keep chain grease and moisture out of the area, but havent done so yet. Ah well, more projects...

that shorty was way ,loud and he did it to remove crash damage. Someone else drilled theirs on a 5th gen, the gutting was i think a 6th. of course i have everything i need to cut it apart and reweld it so iave beeb thinking about it... chris