[ST] Coolant puke?

[Blake Sobiloff <sobiloff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
	I was wondering if anyone else has ever had their bike suddenly puke a 
little coolant for no apparent reason. Here's what happened:

I left Friday night and rode about 150 miles to a friend's house that's
just West of Yosemite. Coming from just about sea level to about 3,000
ft. in elevation, with several higher passes along the way, the bike ran
fine (as always). I parked in my friend's garage overnight, and in the
morning the group of us took a short (30 minute) run before breakfast.
The run was on a highway through the mountains (topping out around 8,000
feet) with lots of nice, gradual sweepers. We didn't push it -- we kept
our speed around 60 or 70 MPH. It was a clear morning in the upper 60's.

Once at the restaurant, I parked along the road next to the restaurant.
The cooling fan came on as I was maneuvering around the parking area and
backing into the parking space. The space was sloped to the left (when
sitting on the bike) maybe 5-10 degrees. Within about 30 seconds of
shutting the engine off there was approx. one cup of coolant dripping
out of the belly pan.

Looking through the side panel vents I couldn't see anything dripping,
just some coolant pooled in the belly pan, so I decided to go have
breakfast and let the engine cool. After breakfast, I took off both side
panels and started the engine. The engine got up to temperature, the fan
came on, but there was no further leaking. As best as I could tell, the
coolant came from somewhere near the head of the right-most cylinder.
There was a clean trail of coolant down that side of the engine case,
but I couldn't see exactly where the trail started -- I would have had
to take the tank off to see better.

Since it wasn't leaking anymore, and the coolant level in the reservoir
was still between the lines, I decided to ride it and see if it happened
again. Fortunately, it didn't act up again for the rest of the trip,
which was approx. 400 miles of tight, twisty roads, high speed sweepers,
and lane splitting through traffic in nearly 100-degree weather.

The bike's going in for it's 18K mile service tomorrow, but if I can't
reproduce the problem it'll be pretty hard for the dealership to fix it.
(I hate problems like this.) Has anyone seen something like this before?
- -- 
Blake "Dawgbert" Sobiloff <sobiloff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Burlingame, CA, USA



     *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
      The ST/RS Mailing list is sponsored by Jack Lilley Ltd.
          http://www.TriumphNet.com/st/lilley for more info
   http://www.TriumphNet.com/st for ST, RS and Mailing List info

=-=-=-= Next Message =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=