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Re: [ST] Coolant puke?



on 8/28/01 12:05 AM, Blake Sobiloff at sobiloff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> 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?

I posted this a while back.

I seem to recall putting silicone grease on the fittings of the reservoir &
inside the reservoir cap to stop a similar condition. Just enough coolant
was seeping out to muck things up and get one wondering. The blue-green
color of the residue of the dried coolant (happens fast in Arizona) showed
up especially well on the inside of the tail section of my yellow '00 RS.
The silicone grease I used came from an Ace Hdwe, plumbing section me
thinks.

Enjoy,

Dennis


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