bic_bicknell
After 13 years of faithful service I was loosing coolant on my KTM and struggled to find someone to find the leak and fix the radiator. Just seems like this is a dying skill and there are few specialist places left operating. (bike shops are useless - rang about 6 and none could help). No.47 put me in touch with guy he knew but so far I haven't been able to get in contact with him.
So decided to do it myself.
I took radiator off and used two wine corks to bung the inlet and outlet pipes. I drilled a hole in one and epoxied in a bike tyre valve so I could pressurise the radiator and immediately found the hole. It was a minute hole corroded in the back and was showing little bubbles when submerged in water. Was going to try aluminium solder but thought getting the radiator part hot enough was asking for trouble so mixed up some two-part chemical metal weld and covered the hole. Ten minutes later the radiator's fixed and it holds 20psi of pressure no problem.
So, in retrospect, my advice is to do it yourself!
So decided to do it myself.
I took radiator off and used two wine corks to bung the inlet and outlet pipes. I drilled a hole in one and epoxied in a bike tyre valve so I could pressurise the radiator and immediately found the hole. It was a minute hole corroded in the back and was showing little bubbles when submerged in water. Was going to try aluminium solder but thought getting the radiator part hot enough was asking for trouble so mixed up some two-part chemical metal weld and covered the hole. Ten minutes later the radiator's fixed and it holds 20psi of pressure no problem.
So, in retrospect, my advice is to do it yourself!